December grad: Nicholas Dighiera and the quest for "one great story"

Nicholas D. Dighiera M.F.A. Creative Writing 2015

Nicholas Dighiera just wants to write one great story.

Truth is, as a December graduate with an M.F.A. in creative writing, he's written more than 100. His first-year mentor in the program, writer Richard Chiappone, marveled at his productivity.

"My job the first year is to get them writing," Chiappone said. "That was not an issue with Nick. Typically, we asked for a story a week. But I could tell Nick I needed one by noon tomorrow, and he'd do it! Nothing was stopping him."

Nick's memory is they asked for eight stories and he delivered 21. To Chiappone, "he was the most ambitious student writer I ever met."

All that evidence suggests that Nick, 34, was born to write. But it took him years to decide to carve out the time to polish his skills. Along the way, his multi-faceted life journey proved educational in surprising ways; it provided him with job skills that are lucrative and globally marketable.

Nick has worked for Amazon as their European hazardous materials manager, shuttling between Seattle and Luxembourg to do his job. He ensured the safety of more than 150 million worldwide shipments (hazmat and non hazmat) from seven European marketplaces, complying with air, road, rail and water regulations along the way. He lead a team of six, but mentored more than 20 from around the world.

While he was doing this intense job the past few years, he also managed to earn his master's. The program gave him the excuse he needed to devote time to writing.

But let's go back to the beginning to see how he got here. His circuitous route proves there truly is no perfect path to this creative writing degree.

Nick started college in 2000 in New Mexico. At a junior college there, he signed up for all pre-med courses. Of that decision, he says simply, "I didn't know what the hell I was doing!"

But looking back, he has a better sense of his quest. He desperately needed a challenge, a role that wouldn't bore him. Every job he'd had up to that point, he'd learned all there was to know about the work in three months. Then he'd grow terribly bored and eventually quit. He wanted badly to change that too-familiar path.

So he joined the military specifically, he says, so he could "learn not to quit. I didn't do it for the educational opportunities, or to defend my country. I joined to learn how not to quit a job."

It worked. He signed up for the fastest track he could find: explosives technician. He ended up serving seven years with the U.S. Air Force as an explosive ordnance disposal craftsman; he deactivated deadly bombs.

Deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, he successfully and safely disarmed more than 60 IEDs (improvised explosive devices). He led more than three-dozen foreign and domestic missions, including to The White House, with zero injuries. He learned to be a leader, and to teach with enthusiasm.

After the war, and with a young family to provide for, he moved to Alaska to work in the commercial explosives industry. When he found he wasn't making enough money, he learned that attending school at night on the G.I. Bill could pay for school and provide supplemental income while he studied. Ever pragmatic, he signed up and completed his B.A. in Business Administration and Management at Alaska Pacific University. After finishing, he worked two years at UAA as a safety officer.

Here the story takes a particularly Dighierian turn.

(Dighierian? Surely you noticed that handlebar mustache, a tiny window into the interests and passions that are Nick?) His choices are an important window into the writer he is becoming.

Nick didn't care much for the first degree he earned: "I don't have a head for business," he says. But his thesis requirement was flexible enough that he could shape it into a study of something he did care about.

"Fine!" he told his advisers. "I want to find out how to become a super hero." Seriously. He wanted to study literature and pull out all the bigger-than-life characters. Then he wanted to distill their success into a formula that he could apply as a test to ordinary human beings.

He leaned heavily on the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who has already cataloged and analyzed every super hero ever written about.

Nick used Campbell's formula for super heroes. It includes "boon" and "point of transformation." (Boon is the treasure that ends up saving everyone. The point of transformation is the point at which the hero accepts the challenge.)

So armed, Nick planned to take his formula to Alaska super heroes and test it on them.

But like all good research, Nick discovered something different. No such formula applied. What did apply was that each potential Alaska super hero had a tremendous commitment to simply getting the work done.

His conversations with subjects were often emotional. "We cried at all the interviews," he remembered. "And in the end, I produced an over-written document."

But the truth Nick found was that, "to make a difference in the world, get off your ---.  That was the only difference in all those people. They started small and they started big. They started old and they started young. And they just did it, anyway."

He felt educated by the experience, and tremendously impressed by the people he met. Their stories of personal commitment against the odds changed his life. They were one reason he set out to earn his master's in creative writing.

"My M.F.A. is the first degree I ever cared about," Nick said. "I don't care about its monetary value. It gave me the perfect excuse to sit for three years and pursue writing. That has morphed into what it is today, my desire to write one great story."

What qualifies as a great story? He has an idea. Much that we have to read is engaging and interesting. Yet, after you close the book and get away from it, "it's like a dream, it just fades."

Except for a great story.

"Every so often, a short story or a piece of creative nonfiction or a novel, you close the book and you just sit for 30 minutes and chew on a corner of that book. Weeks later, you're raking leaves. You look up at the sky and think, 'Holy ----! That was an amazing story."

He wants nothing less. Chiappone says Nick wants "to write the final story. After he writes it, no one else will have to." That's a tall order.

After quitting a job last May, Nick made himself "intentionally homeless." He took a long road trip with his two young sons, Dominic, age 9, and Finn, age 6. Together, they lived each day to the fullest as they adventured along the highway. Now, he's taking that material and working it into a memoir.

Yes, he's still toiling nine-to-five, a situation he bluntly calls "the machinery of commerce." At this point in his life, he considers personal time his most valuable possession. It is not that he doesn't like to work. He loves to work, but the work he values most enriches his own life, not necessarily the life of his employer. And every way he can, he plans to spend as much time as possible in pursuit of that great story.

To illustrate, he tells one episode from his road trip. Their traveling van broke down, and for two weeks in Seattle, he and his boys spent time repairing the van. At one point moving through traffic, a big box loaded with heavy tools fell forward onto one of his sons. The boy was fine, but the experiences unnerved Nick.

Pulled off the road but still in the driver's seat, Nick  cried. He told his sons they needed a better father.

What his young son did next moved Nick deeply. Dominic said nothing. He simply picked up all the tools, loaded them back into the box, and waited quietly for his father.

"There'll never be another day when we connect with each other like that," Nick said. "You don't get that when you just go to work every day."

Written by Kathleen McCoy, UAA Office of Advancement

December Archive