five more voices
~ five writers, each issue ~
generations of West Virginia creative writing
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Portrait of an unconventional writer
"Books are not the only way to write."
Lisa Hayes-Minney
For three decades, Lisa Hayes-Minney has dispatched thoughtful / sassy batches of words out into the world
from her farm in Stumptown, near the Gilmer/Calhoun county line, 14 miles from the nearest traffic light. She’s been a copywriter, columnist, reporter, teacher, publisher, ghostwriter, author, grantwriter, ad designer and essayist, among other things. She even once wrote plain-English directions for a manufacturer of Chinese magic tricks.
“Living in the country, you do end up wearing a lot of hats,” she said.
She launched Two-Lane Livin’ Magazine and Stumptown Publishing, LLC in 2007. People loved
it. By 2017, she was distributing 18,000 copies per month. "People passed their copies around.
We figured an average of 2.5 readers per copy." That makes 45,000 readers. Plus subscribers
in 27 states.
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For ten years, central West Virginia readers soaked up her weekly meditations and meanderings
on gardens, floods, deer, home remedies, genealogy, local history, animals, recipes, uses for
duct tape, floods, and small-town squabbles.
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People would hug her when they saw her. “I loved the way everybody called me the Two-Lane Lady,” she said. “I’d be
out, and people would be like, 'You're the Two Lane Lady!' They'd give me big old hugs, and I'd be like, oh my gosh, that Harley Davidson guy just grabbed me!"
Copies of Two-Lane Livin’ were free. Local advertisers supported it. “I sold and designed ads, received writing from columnists, put it all together on the computer, then uploaded it to the printer in Parkersburg.” She and her husband Frank, a contractor, wore out two SUVs delivering 18,000 copies to the 500+ locations that distributed Two-Lane Livin’: offices, laundromats, restaurants, rest stops, etc., in 18 counties. “It took 10-12 days to deliver them all.”
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Inside each issue, readers found glimpses of Central West Virginia culture, of two-lane living.
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Lisa and her contractor husband had to shut the magazine down in 2017. "I loved my readers, and I really mourned when we shut Two-Lane Livin' down," she said. “For ten years, I had readers that I adored, and they adored the magazine, then it was gone.
“But it just got to be too much for us,” she said. “It outgrew us, our time, our ability, our budget. From the very first issue, we could not print enough. It was dominating our lives and schedules.”
It was hard to lose all that connection. She missed seeing people in stores and laundomats all over central West Virginia. She missed the things people would say to her. "My favorite two compliments for the magazine were, ‘I don’t read anything but Two-Lane Livin’,’ and ‘We keep our copies next to the toilet!’
After they shut down, Lisa worked for five years as the Gilmer County library director (becoming the state Library Director of the Year along the way). She taught classes at Glenville State and got a graduate degree in creative writing.
But she got increasingly lonesome for her readers.
They couldn't start up Two-Lane Livin' again, so in 2017,
she started Two-Lane Renaissance on the Internet,
which doesn't involve all that driving and distribution.
“The reasons I started Two-Lane Renaissance had
nothing to do with making money or getting
subscribers,” she said. “I had to write for an audience again, whether it be my mom, my sister, my cousin, or 500 subscribers. It didn't matter. There’s something in me that makes me need that audience. Is that hubris? Is that humanity? If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, did it make a sound? If you write and nobody reads it, did you write?”
All her life, Lisa has played with words.
“I self-published my first book in seventh grade. I dragged out my mom's typewriter and some vellum paper and typed it on the typewriter. I illustrated it with crayons, I sewed the binding on with my mother's sewing machine, and I took a cardboard box and cut it up and made a binder and covered it with fabric.”
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Her father was a college administrator, and her mother taught grammar, speech, and composition. “In grade school, my sister and I were diagramming sentences for fun.” She started her first job at age nine at her aunt’s advertising agency. “There were cutters and labelers and collators and stampers and binding machines and sorting machines. I liked the designing, the printing, the paper, the cutting, and the binding.
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“I think of myself more as an editor and publisher than a writer, because of that early life. I have 18 typewriters in my house, commercial cutting machines, and laminating machines. I have three binding machines. I'm not willing to let go of all these old things that I love."​
Six of Lisa's eighteen typewriters
Her work in marketing taught her this: “Audience is a huge component of what you write and produce. It's all about what problem you can solve for your target market.”
Her creative writing degree taught her something else: “I learned something mind-blowing. If you can activate your reader’s imagination, you’ve opened the door to increasing their level of empathy. Even your most God-awful character, if you put them in a situation that allows your reader to imagine the scene, the reader neurologically cannot help but empathize with that character. That’s huge.
“The whole point of creative non-fiction is to make the personal experience universal,” she said. She’s doing that again with her creative nonfiction, this time online, telling stories from her life that people in Calhoun and Gilmer can easily imagine. She tells about the blind dog she took home and learned to love, the floodwaters that covered their road, the doe that acts like it owns her back yard.
Click on the photos below to read six Renaissance posts.
Left to right: Click the picture.​
* The Sounds of Silence / Enlightenment, courtesy of a dog who can't see.
* Got your waders on? / Spring flood season in central WV
* They act like we're in their space / We are.
Left to right: Click the picture.
​* History of a Writer / Who do I think I am anyway?
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* Hillbilly gratitude / for things doable outside Dominant Society
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* Spirulina, the Holler Hopper / Ode to a Subaru Impreza, my first of many Subarus
But by the time Lisa started Two-Lane Renaissance, something was different: “I also wanted to start writing about bigger issues, darker issues, hopeful issues, planet issues, country issues.” She started researching controversial local issues, using her journalism skills, mixing those stories in with her pieces about dogs, floods and deer.
After she published some investigative articles, a few people who disagreed attacked her personally on Facebook. She was surprised. “If you want to have a healthy debate on topics, I'm up for it,” she said. “But if I write something about an issue that is important to a small community, and you go on Facebook and say that I'm a practicing witch, then I don't really want to play in that venue anymore.”​
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Local readers "tell me to keep it up,' she says. She thinks about it. “Writing nonfiction, personal narrative, requires being vulnerable. These days, it’s very difficult to be vulnerable in this world.” The world is getting meaner, she notes, and writers have to decide how to react.
Three spunky Lisa posts.
Left to right: Click on picture.
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​* Second mechanic's lien filed against 1982.
* When God's people get mean
* Shouldn't there be butts in those chairs?
“I want to keep exploring and creating in my own way.”
She hasn’t abandoned investigating. In May, she posted about a breach of contract lawsuit a contractor filed against a community project (see above). She included photocopies of the court filing. “I wholeheartedly believe the community should know all the details. If no one else will provide those, I feel that I must.”
Some people praise her nerve. She says it’s actually “lack of self-protection.” “I’m a stream of consciousness writer. I basically vomit on the page and post. I may regret it the moment I post it. I may sit down with a theme or an idea that I've been mulling over. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea. I just know I need to sit down and write because there's something on my mind I've got to figure out. Does that require nerve? I don't think it does. I think it requires hubris, a desire to be heard, a desire to leave your mark on the world. But not nerve.”
As always, she’s looking for ways to keep writing. And growing. "Books are not the only way to write." She shut down her Facebook and most other social media that occupy psychic space. “I don't want to spend my day posting hashtags or creating an online brand. I don’t want to find or have a ‘niche.’ I want to keep exploring and creating in my own way.”
She asks herself what she enjoys. “I like to empower writers,” she said. During the pandemic, Calhoun and Gilmer got reliable internet via Starlink, and that made it possible for Lisa to do online tutoring, often for homeschooled students.
“I love it when students who struggle with writing in school light up when they understand what their professors are expecting from them. Academic writing is a formula. When students understand that formula, that cloud over them that says, ‘I’m not a writer,’ dissipates."
She also coaches local writers face-to-face. “I helped one woman publish a book called Mimi’s Pee Pot Goes to Town, a wonderful true children's story. She wanted copies for each of her grandchildren. I love all books, but the books that pull my heart are the ones created from love, for a birthday, for friends or family, or from personal passion.” She helped a local man who spent a lifetime timbering write his books about his experience.
Three years ago, in 2022, she was questioning herself: “Am I worthy enough for a newsletter?” she wrote. “Am I justified?” Another post asked, “Who do I think I am, anyway?” Now, she has come to some basic realizations. “I don’t have to prove to someone that what I've written is worthy of print. Everybody is a writer. Everybody has a right to write.”
She posts in Two-Lane Renaissance about once a month now, sometimes giving readers a glimpse of country life, sometimes digging up information she feels her neighbors should have.
She’s shifting into writing-teacher mode. “Education and writing in my life are intertwined,” she says. In 2023, she created the online Two-Lane Learning Studio for tutoring, writing classes and workshops.
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She offers multi-day writing workshops when she can and has created an online course on journaling. “I think the biggest power of words relates to the words we speak to ourselves.The journal can empower people."
Her current situation, she says, is "an ongoing attempt to survive a never-ending midlife crisis while living in a country in crisis."
“I think I'm going analog now. I've got my markers, stamp pads, and pens out. I've made my living around words, but that doesn't mean I always made my living as a writer. It's fun putting together different pages, collating, adding illustrations, and combining them all to get something in my hands. I have a cutting machine in the corner, collecting dust. And binding machines, laminators, commercial printers. And I like arranging layouts, like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”
“One of the things that I have discovered are zines,” small, homemade books. “They’re
the perfect size for a single essay or single topic. I am just drawn to the total lack
of rules and pretense.
“A zine is typically pocket-sized and home-printed, oftentimes cut with a crappy
paper cutter, and there might only be five copies, ever. To me, it's art. To me, they are
beautiful. I love those little pocketbooks. I'll take them with me wherever I go, and I'll read them in a waiting room or while in line somewhere.”
She's determined not to get swamped again. Here’s a recent note to her Two-Lane Renaissance readers: "I give no promises about future features, because the tomatoes need tied up, the melons and squash need weeded, and I need to check the blackberries every morning and evening, or there won’t be jam this winter."
“I recently conversed with another writer who fell into a rut many writers do," she said. '"We compare ourselves to other writers, others we went to school with, others we work with, others in our writer’s groups, others’ opinions of what a writer should be.
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“Comparison can kill creativity. A writer should write. It’s that simple. Getting paid to write is a whole other game, and in many ways is contrary to being creative. Now I just want to write, produce, create, and share my creations.
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“My current dream is to take a vending machine and fill it with zines. I have hundreds of essays. I could sit down today and create a zine for each one of my favorite essays and fill a vending machine and go restock and empty the coins once a month. That would make me happy right now.”
​​​A note from Lisa to her readers: "Thanks for subscribing to my messy world. If you’d like to bless this mess, share Two-Lane Renaissance with your friends and followers."
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Links to Lisa's online and offline activities - including her collection, Life in the Slow Lane,
can be found at https://linktr.ee/lhminney and at https://lhayesminney.net
This page is a joint project of writer Laura Jackson and editor Kate Long. Laura Jackson's widely-praised book of essays, Deep and Wild: Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums & Finding Your Way in West Virginia was awarded the 2023 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize. A lifelong West Virginian, Laura lives in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she rescues homeless animals and spends time with her sons on mountains and in rivers. In her day job, she interviews researchers and writes about what they're doing, in language the average person can understand. Contact: https://www.laura-jackson.com
