1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
CORRECTION is the first book I've written entirely under constraint, and so in that sense, it's quite different from my other books. Though there were other contributing factors, many other contributing factors, I can clearly remember reading Daniel Levin Becker's book on the OuLiPo, Many Subtle Channels, and feeling jealous of the relationships the writers in that book had to their work. They all seemed so much healthier than my relationship to my own writing has been. So, I decided to introduce some constraints into my writing process, and I found I enjoyed the results, I think even enjoyed the process itself in a way I hadn't enjoyed it in some time.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I don't know if I came to fiction first. I think I wanted to write nonfiction, and, certainly, when I started writing with any kind of discipline, I would have been reading more nonfiction than fiction. (And then even now, I'm not always certain I haven't written nonfiction, though there are plenty of things I've written that are clearly fiction; CORRECTION, anyway, contains both fiction and nonfiction.) Sometimes one suits what I'm trying to write, sometimes the other does. I started writing by writing fiction because I couldn't figure out how to write nonfiction at the time, or else maybe because I thought I didn't have anything to write that would be recognized as nonfiction.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I have done research and taken notes for my previous books, sometimes quite a lot of notes, as with Madeleine E. For CORRECTION, though, there were no notes, no especially directed research. When I came across a story I wanted to tell, I wrote.
Maybe I should say that one of the constraints used in CORRECTION is that I started a new piece every week. It wasn't necessary to finish each piece within a week, only that I would start a new piece each week. (They're all very short anyway, and I sometimes did finish them before the end of the week.) There was then a sense of moving on, taking up new concerns, which sometimes helped me give pieces a greater sense of compression and synthesis in revision. As far as I can recall, there were some pieces that were close to their final forms even in their first moments, but in general, my first drafts tend not to look much like the published versions. I enjoy revising, and I particularly enjoyed revising the pieces in CORRECTION.
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Both. Babel, for example, the collection that came out in November of 2020, was the result of seeing a set of related concerns in the short fictions I'd written over a period of six or seven years and then writing a few new stories that worked with that same set of concerns. My novels, on the other hand, were always intended to be novels. CORRECTION was always meant to have 101 texts.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I'm happy to give readings, but I don't seek them out anymore. I don't think they play any part in my writing process. (I typically revise by reading things aloud, almost always to myself, sometimes to the dog, but I think it would be a stretch to call that a "reading.") I don't hear well when there's background noise, so, even though I enjoy the company of others, I don't get much out of big gatherings. There's a bit of push and pull there.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
This is a good question, by which I mean I don't have a good answer.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Though I think there must be writers who can do things other than write, I'm not sure I'm one, so I'd be disinclined to play a role other than writer in the larger culture, not that anyone has asked me to do more. Anyway, I think this is a part of why I'm so ambivalent about social media.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Being myself an editor, I can't say otherwise than "essential."
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
A piece of advice that has been very important to me and to my writing process: Michael Martone once told me something along the lines of, If you don't quite pull something off in one story, you can always try it again in the next story. Hearing that was very freeing. It helped me to see when I was done with things, when it was time to move on, when I might be overworking something.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
Quite easy. Stories hold great appeal for me; they always have. Some stories are made up, others are not.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
At least since the beginning of the lockdowns, in March of last year, I wake at around 4 AM. I have a job and I also take care of a toddler, so I have to wake up before everyone else in the house or I won't get anything done whatsoever. I typically read for about an hour, then write until everyone's awake, maybe another two hours. Then I read books to and play with the toddler, take her to the park, and so on, until her nap. While she naps, I teach or edit, depending on the day. Then she wakes up. They're full days, and often tiring days.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I can't recall feeling stalled in my writing. Particularly now, I have many more books to write than I have time. When I don't feel up to writing something new, I revise. When I have nothing to revise, I read.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The smell of sugarcane burning in the fields.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Madeleine E. had to do with Hitchcock's Vertigo, so I'm bound to say films, even though I almost never watch movies anymore. I so rarely have time. My mother and my sibling are both visual artists, and I do take a great deal of inspiration from visual art, but I think I tend to put that into words via story, and so a cogent answer here as to how I make use of those influences probably isn't forthcoming.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Even an attempt at a complete list would be interminably long, I think. Some writers that occur to me in the moment, and with the usual caveat that I will be leaving out a number of quite important writers: John Berger, Eliot Weinberger, Gertrude Stein, Garielle Lutz, Brian Evenson, Thomas Bernhard, Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lydia Davis, WG Sebald, Bae Suah, Yasunari Kawabata, Marie NDiaye, Lawrence Weschler, Gerald Murnane, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Michael Martone . . . really the list would be quite long.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I'd like to finish two books I've already started. I'd also love to find a job from which—at some point in the distant future—I could retire comfortably, though I think that one is maybe far-fetched.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Well, since I published my first story, I have been a server, a professor, and an editor, sometimes all at once. I very much enjoy teaching, and would like to think, if given a choice, it's what I would do regardless of what else I'd be doing.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I enjoy reading, and I want to do something for others worth doing.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Most recently, I very much enjoyed Werner Herzog's documentary about Bruce Chatwin, Nomad, though if I'm confining myself to just the last great film, I'd have to go further back. I really don't watch many films. As for books, there are Elizabeth Hardwick's Collected Essays, Jana Larson's Reel Bay, and Garielle Lutz's The Complete Gary Lutz, all great.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I have continued writing using the same constraints I used to write CORRECTION. I've also been working on a book of nonfiction for a few years now; I'd love to have the time to finish it, but I'm not sure how that might happen. Government-supported childcare would go a long way.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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