ENC 3836 – Careers and Professional Practices
This piece began as a class assignment but became a turning point in my approach to writing. In this interview, Professor Nathan Holic shares the influences, routines, and creative philosophies that helped me rethink perfection, process, and what it means to make space for my own work.
I hurried from my home office to another room in the house so I could join a Zoom meeting with Professor Holic. He was patient and kind, even though I started rambling—or blabbing—it’s all a blur now, but I probably sounded like an idiot. We made brief small talk, and then he launched into interviewing me! I’m not sure if that was to break the ice because I seemed so frazzled, or if he wanted to make sure I hadn’t signed him up to answer questions that would reveal all his writer secrets.
After I answered his first few questions—why I chose to interview him, what I hoped to learn—I finally felt like I could breathe again. Once the initial nerves passed, I settled in and started the interview for real.
He was gracious, unhurried, and effortlessly thoughtful. Even though I hadn’t sent him my questions ahead of time, he seemed to have an answer at the ready for everything—the kind that makes you forget you’re supposed to be taking notes because you just want to keep listening. And listen, I did. With his permission, I used the voice memo app on my phone to record, and I just enjoyed our conversation.
I joked a little with him that some of my questions might sound familiar—I may have borrowed one or two from the assignment I’d just completed for him: a self-portrait of my writer self. I wanted his perspective on the questions he’d asked of our class.
My first question was, “Who are the authors that most shaped your reading or writing world? And do you still see their influence in your work now?”
Professor Holic grinned, and I could tell he appreciated my candor about using his own questions to make him think during our interview. He replied, “I think probably my earliest author that I followed and looked up to was Stephen King.”
If I hadn’t already decided that I enjoyed this professor’s class, that statement sealed it. As a King lover myself, it tickled me more than I expected.
“My parents would find me really from like fifth or sixth grade every year—they would buy me whatever new hardcover had come out for Christmas. That was one of my big Christmas gifts.”
As he talked about his parents buying him each new Stephen King hardcover for Christmas, I could almost picture it—the wide grin of a middle-school kid unwrapping horror, the kind of excitement only a reader could understand. He laughed as he mentioned The Stand, that massive, intimidating novel he conquered as a freshman, and I could still hear that same pride in his voice now.
But then, as quickly as King had shaped his early imagination, other influences stepped in—Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, and eventually Alan Moore and Frank Miller. The horror gave way to satire, then to comics, and finally to the kind of hybrid creativity that doesn’t quite fit a single genre.
“I loved that Vonnegut could make you laugh at something while you were still horrified by it,” he said. “It kind of gave me a new path for fiction.”
I loved that line—a new path for fiction. It made me think about how writers evolve, how reading widely stretches the boundaries of what we think we can do. When he mentioned comics, his tone lit up again. “I drew my own in middle school,” he said, smiling. “And I still write them now.”
Then he said something that stayed with me: “If I wanted to be perfect, I would have never drawn a comic.”
That comment hit me harder than I expected. At first, I laughed, but the more I sat with it, the more I realized how much perfectionism gets in my way. I overthink everything I write—every sentence, every idea, every possible direction a story could take. Hearing him admit that imperfection is where creativity begins to feel like someone giving me permission to loosen my grip. It was a reminder that work doesn’t have to be flawless to matter, and that sometimes the bravest thing a writer can do is simply start.
That one line landed like a challenge. As someone who constantly overthinks every sentence, it was the kind of advice I didn’t know I needed.
So, I asked, “How many unfinished drafts do you have tucked away? Do you ever revisit them, or do they just stay as little relics on your hard drive?”
He laughed at the question and leaned back, nodding like someone about to confess a long-kept secret. “I’m kind of old school,” he admitted. “I write everything by hand.” He paused, reached off-camera, and came back holding up a small white legal pad—maybe six by nine inches, the kind you’d keep in a glove compartment. “Like this,” he said, grinning.
He talked about the cliché of the old professor with a half-finished novel in his desk drawer—and then admitted he literally has one. “They’re all written,” he said, “but on notepads like this.” Dozens of them, tucked into file folders labeled to be typed, to be edited, someday. Nothing, he explained, is ever truly abandoned. It just waits in “a state of flagging interest” until something else calls it back to life.
When I asked what happens on the days when the words refuse to come, he smiled and tapped the pad. “That’s why I keep them everywhere,” he said. “My car, my desk, my bag—if I have a notepad with me, I can at least jot something down.” He talked about using the quiet before the day begins—his good hours, he called them, borrowing the phrase from writer David Huddle. Those early mornings, before the noise of classes and emails, were when his mind felt the most open. “By nine-thirty,” he said, “I’m already thinking about grading and meetings, but that first hour? That’s when I can actually hear myself think.”
His most recent comics, he told me, began as short stories that never quite worked. “The words weren’t coming,” he said, “so I changed the form.” He shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world, but it sounded like creative alchemy—turning a failure into a new medium entirely.
Listening to him, I realized his entire process was about movement. Nothing static, nothing wasted—just ideas waiting for their next shape.
The more he talked about his routine, the more I kept thinking about those notebooks. I don’t know that I could ever write an entire draft by hand, but I understood what he meant about slowing down—about giving ideas space to breathe instead of rushing them onto a screen.
A week after our conversation, I tried his advice. I set my alarm an hour earlier, brewed a cup of tea, and used that quiet time just for my own writing—not coursework, not editing for anyone else, just mine. It felt awkward at first, but that quiet hour became surprisingly productive.
It reminded me how much I miss writing for myself. It’s the first thing I’ve written with the intention of sending it out for publication—something I’ve been thinking about since his assignment (if I’m honest) asking us to explore publications and their submission requirements. That little nudge stuck with me longer than I expected.
Maybe that’s what I took most from his process: not that I need a drawer full of notebooks, but that I need to make space for my own creative curiosity—wherever it fits.
That same patience showed up when he talked about teaching. He told me that one of the biggest challenges he faces is convincing students to reread their own work—to slow down and see what’s actually on the page. “A lot of them hit that last period, save, and never look at it again,” he said, smiling. “But if you reread, you find everything you were really trying to say.”
It struck me that his approach to teaching wasn’t all that different from his approach to writing: nothing rushed, nothing wasted, everything worth revisiting.
When I asked what he’d tell his younger writing self, he grinned and called it “good bad advice.” “Read and write daily,” he said, but then immediately clarified—don’t turn it into a punishment. “Try to write every day,” he explained, “but be flexible about it. You’re allowed to take a day off. Just show yourself that it matters enough to make time for it.”
He compared it to keeping a marriage alive—something you still have to nurture, not just talk about. “If you stop putting effort into it, it becomes just another thing you used to love.” That line stuck with me, maybe because it hit a little too close to home. I thought about the way I talk about writing when life gets busy—how easily it slides into the past tense.
Teaching, he said, had also made him more aware of his own habits. “I think it’s solidified my process,” he told me. Having to talk about writing every day, to explain why he does what he does, pushed him to examine his own choices more closely. He even joked that sometimes the readings he assigns end up teaching him something new—that building a class is a kind of draft, too, one he’s always revising.
It was also nice to actually see him face to face. Until that interview, all our interactions had been through Canvas announcements and the occasional email. Talking with him felt different—still academic, sure, but easy. He was funny, thoughtful, and refreshingly honest about the realities of being a writer and a teacher.
Before we wrapped up, he mentioned that if I was ever on campus, I should stop by his office during office hours. “Just drop me an email first,” he said, smiling. We ended up laughing about the wildness of campus parking—how finding a spot can sometimes take longer than the drive itself. “I feel like I’m giving you an extra twenty-minute hassle just trying to park,” he joked. It was a small, human moment, the kind that reminded me how much lighter conversations feel once the pressure of an assignment fades.
After we ended the call, I sat for a while thinking about that invitation—not so much the literal one, but what it represented: an open door, a reminder that writing and learning don’t really end when the semester does.
