12 or 20 (second series) questions with Vanessa Saunders

Vanessa Saunders is a professor of practice at Loyola University New Orleans. Her feminist, experimental novel, The Flat Woman, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize with Fiction Collective 2 and is published by University of Alabama Press. Her hybrid work, fiction, and poetry has appeared in Seneca Review, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, and [PANK] among others. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she received her MFA from Louisiana State University. 

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

When a publisher says yes to your project for the first time, it is an incredible feeling. Everything before that feels tentative and uncertain. I knew that I was a person who wrote, but I did not really feel like I could publicly call myself a writer until I had a book on contract. Being an artist during the pandemic was really agonizing and scary, especially since that was the period when I happened to finish my book. So I was getting all these rejections and honestly, questioning my choices to try to make this academic/ writer life work. Writers have to be emotionally strong and handle rejection well because it’s pretty constant. 

When I got the email, it was at the end of a very long day. But I can still remember jumping up and down in my living room and just feeling very happy. My husband was in the room with me and he did not understand what was happening at first. 

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

So, actually, I would say I came to poetry first. I was originally planning to be a fiction writer when I was a young person. But when my first story was workshopped in my first creative writing class in San Francisco, it went really badly. It was a huge class, so we were split up into groups of five or four, with no professor present. I turned in a bad short story about a tragic romantic relationship I was in at the time. My small group absolutely obliterated my story. I can still remember a male student, wearing a waist coat and a fedora, telling me my story was “a loaf of bread that needed to become a casserole.” 

In short, they tore me apart. The guy in the waist-coat was pretty vicious. I came home and cried about it. From then on, I had this idea that I was a bad fiction writer.

But later, in poetry workshops, I got good feedback. People liked my poetry. So I listened to other people instead of myself, and I wrote poetry for years. My book, The Flat Woman, was actually initially conceived as a novel-in-verse and relied more on poetic conventions. It was only after that the poetry version of the project was rejected a number of times that I thought about turning back to fiction. My agent at the time suggested to me that writing my book as a novel would help it find a home. It ended up being a blend of fiction and poetry, though it has been officially marketed as fiction. 

Since then, I have been focused on writing fiction. Studying poetry for as long as I did has made me a better writer, but I had to go back to my roots and realize that I wanted to write about people. I like people and I think they are interesting. I knew what I wanted to write all along, but as a young person, it’s easy to ignore your own intuitions and feel focused on what other people’s opinions of you. Now that I’m older, I can see how important it is to trust your own judgment. And to realize people’s opinions of you often have nothing to do with you. You don’t need to worry about what everything else thinks. Although I do agree the short story I turned in for workshop back in 2009 was probably really, really bad. So the guy in the waistcoat was probably right. 

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?

My projects take forever. In the case of The Flat Woman, I was trying to write about disengagement from the climate crisis. It took me at least two years to get the major bones of the story in place: women are being blamed for climate change. Our main character starts dating an environmental activist, which makes her question her own inaction.

It took me another three years to figure out what genre I was writing in (fiction, not poetry). And then another two years making it a novel instead of a book of poetry. This mostly meant developing interiority, narrative tension, and adding in elements of magical realism. 

I am hoping my second novel does not take as long as my first. 

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?

I am a book-length project person. I usually start with a question or a theme or a line of thought I want to interrogate, and then I spend years trying to make the characters, the conflict, voice, and the style speak to what I’m trying to write about. After the project coalesces, I then spend years trying to make sure the writing is nice and that every part of the story has heat. The Flat Woman is a story that relies a lot on strangeness as a narrative engine, and that took some time to perfect. 

But, usually, I’m thinking through an idea and using the space of the entire book to work it out. There is usually an element of the unexpected in my process, which is why I hate talking about projects before they’re complete.

For example: The Flat Woman was originally intended as a project about women’s issues and feminism. It was a total surprise to see all these environmental themes emerge. Of course, now those themes are a huge part of the book. But they were never part of my original plan. I think one of the things that makes me successful as a writer is allowing things to happen. Going with the flow. I am good at going with the flow in real life but I had to learn how to let things happen on the page and let the happy accidents materialize. In the past, I was too focused on narrative control, and that hampered my process. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

No, I don’t enjoy doing readings. But I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t hate them. I don’t enjoy listening to writing read aloud, I am not an audiobook person, so maybe I just don’t see the point. I think the point is to mingle with your community. But I’ve found personal happiness in separating my job from my personal life, which means maybe I’m not as connected with my writers community as I could be. That is something I’ve tried to work on during the last year. I will say, the writerly community in New Orleans is amazing and very welcoming. 

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?

I think each project has its own concerns. With The Flat Woman, I was thinking about personal responsibility in the context of mass disaster. 

As an artist, I like to create thought-driven conflicts that probe areas of moral ambiguity. All of my work is driven by my own strong sense of ethics as it contrasts with a world that puts me at odds with my values. Sometimes, life in America feels really complicated. There’s a lot of toxic harm all around us. I like to write about ordinary people who have complex relationships to good and evil.

Lately I’ve wondered if this point of view had anything to do with growing up in the Bay Area. There is a really high homeless population living next to communities of extreme wealth and privilege. Living in San Francisco and Oakland, I would be confronted with people begging for money all the time. It happened multiple times a day. The people who ask you for money are really struggling, have visible signs of their struggle in their body and demeanor. So, what do you do? A good person would give up some of their money, but what if you can’t afford to do this again and again? What if the money you give them is used to feed their addiction and so just makes things worse? The super uncomfortable ethical questions of how to behave in this type of situation is at the center of my work. That kind of confrontation with one’s own privilege and one’s apathy towards suffering is incredibly uncomfortable.  I think a lot of people in the bay just learn to just ignore the people begging and not even say anything. I do think in America, we’ve become really numb to one another. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I don’t believe in art as an object of emotional catharsis. For that reason, I don’t write about my personal life in my work, and I have not for a long time. I’m unable to write about personal things well because I lack emotional distance from the subject, so I don’t do it very well in my opinion. 

I don’t believe in one single interpretation to this question of the role of art or the writer’s role in the world. But I do have an individual philosophy that dictates how I write. And let me be clear here that I write literary fiction. I like to incorporate genre elements into my work, but I write for a literary audience.

I believe that art should help the reader view the world differently. I was very influenced by an interview with Ben Lerner and the Believer where he said, “The libindal should be harnessed by the political.” Specifically he says, “I think that sexual pleasure and the weird color of the sky after a storm or the stream of tail lights across the bridge or the way silence can thin or thicken before music starts—all these things have to be harnessed by the political.”

That is to say, writing should interrogate the relationship between individuals and the wider systems that affect their experience of the world. These can be literal systems– such as the health care system– or abstract systems– such as the wider question of human goodness. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

No, I love feedback. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m not super precious about my work. Anyone who is investing their time into helping you improve should be cherished. 

Writing is an interesting balance of ignoring other people’s opinions and using people’s opinions to help you elevate your shit. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Success as a writer is not about talent. It is a question of persistence. 

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction to hybrid work)? What do you see as the appeal?

Studying poetry made me a better writer of prose. It helped me understand that each novel has its own style, and the voice of the piece should be carefully curated according to the theme and topic. Of course, my decisions on this front are often more intuitive. 

But I think the whole point of poetry is to find the perfect form for the topic you’re writing about. And so I apply that to fiction. This means I don’t have one static style, but I do have a style for each of my specific projects. People have said that I have a lot of range for that reason. I’ve also read a lot, which helps me have a flexible approach to writing. 

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?

During the academic semester, I usually spend about two hours writing every day, and then an hour reading. Then I spend the rest of the day on my teaching duties, which often involves more reading. 

This changes in the summer when I have more time to write. As you can see, I spend a lot of time writing. But reading is just as important as writing. It helps me have more insight into my own form. 
For example, reading Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson inspired me to write The Flat Woman.

Reading Get In Trouble by Kelly Link helped me figure out how to finish it. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I don’t get stalled very often. I’ve had some personal things happen in life that sometimes impact my relationship to what I’m working on. If something is uncomfortable, I try to write into the space of the discomfort. Or incorporate that discomfort into the plot. 

If I have questions about what I’m working on, I try to read people who I think will help me figure it out. My current project is steeped in historical research, so sometimes I’ll have questions about practical historical things that trip me up. Researching helps me answer those questions and allows me to better imagine the world of my book.

Sometimes, you just need some space away from the project. Distance is everything. It can be hard to let yourself have a break if you’re focused on a deadline. But what my first book did is teach me how to have patience. 

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Probably the smell of dry dirt or the smell of the ocean. I’m from northern California and I grew up about forty-five minutes from the beach. I come from a very ecologically conscious place in the world, and growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors in nature. Its not a surprise that the environment is such a huge presence in The Flat Woman. But The Flat Woman is an expression of my anxiety about the condition of the planet. In this book, the environment is decaying, rotting, and is quite disgusting. In the second half of the book, The Flat Woman leans into a more ecological horror element, which is a reflection of own climate anxiety. 

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?

I definitely am a television and movie person. My work uses a lot of visual inspiration from the stories I watch on the screen. The Flat Woman is a story that relies on imagery heavily to make meaning. Right now, I am actually working on a television pilot of The Flat Woman, and it’s been interesting to me how easily the story can be adapted to a different mode. Maybe that novel was always meant to be written as a television show. But I suppose speculative fiction relies on memorable visuals to build the world– just like the red cloaks in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. So maybe speculative stories generally convert well to film. 

Back when I was writing more poetry than I am now, I used to find inspiration in all types of texts: questionnaires, brochures, diary entries, emails, etc. I used to be pretty obsessed with form and using friction between different forms as an engine. But now I think more about stories: conflict, scenes, and rising tension. I never thought I would be a person who works on traditional stories. But the novel I’m working on is structurally a pumpkin spice latte, which is to say it’s pretty basic. The book of poetry I’m working on is very experimental, but that project is hard to talk about.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I would say the writers who I think about the most are: Anne Carson, Kelly Link, and Toni Morrison. Kelly Link combines genres and tropes from high and low culture in a way that fascinates me. Anne Carson uses hybridity and poetic forms to tell stories in a way that fascinates me. And Toni Morrison helped me understand that novels can have all the beauty and precision of language as poetry. She also wrote novels that were incredibly important and filled an important niche in American literature. 

There is a story about Toni Morrison’s life I often think about. Her landlord set fire to her family home, while her family was at home, because her parents could not afford to pay rent. Instead of becoming angry, they just laughed in his face. For me, she represents elegance and integrity in a world that tries to strip a person of those virtues. She is a model of feminine strength, wisdom, and holding onto your own self worth. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Visit South Africa. Visit Asia. Visit Argentina. 

As a writer, I’m pretty nomadic in the sense that I flit between genres. But I’m also a nomadic person in general. I love to see new places and experience different parts of the world. In my twenties, I spent a few months living in the Dominican Republic, and about three years living in the United Kingdom, so for a while, people would look at my resume and have no idea where I was actually from. I have been living in south Louisiana for ten years, which is the longest place I’ve lived anywhere besides California. Anyway, I’ve invested a lot of my time and money into traveling. It’s probably my favorite thing to do besides write and spend time with loved ones. 

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?

I am ultimately good with language and for that reason, I find language interesting. So I would probably be someone who writes speeches or public policy. At the end of the day, I want my jobs to be meaningful and give me purpose along with money. So I suppose I would’ve tried to use my skills to help other people. If not in writing then in some type of humanitarian role. All that being, being a writer and a professor is a perfect job for me. I know these types of positions are shrinking every year, and I’m very grateful to do the work that I do. I try to be very intentional with how I use the classroom space, and so I try to model ethical behavior and not waste anyone’s time. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid. But I got really serious when I was twenty. That was when I started to have a serious writing practice. That was also the time I started studying creative writing at San Francisco State University. I focus well if it’s a subject I’m interested in, and I think my discipline is why I’ve been successful. As James Baldwin said, “Talent is insignificant.”

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I recently read Tar Baby by Toni Morrison. I am convinced she is the best prose writer of her time. Reading her always makes me want to push myself. 

Not a film exactly, but I find myself thinking back to Station Eleven a lot. It’s the same writer and showrunner as The Leftovers. I love the way that writer uses metaphysical themes in his work. I always think about the scenes in Station Eleven where the characters in the film are performing scenes from plays like Shakespeare. But the scenes they are performing have an interesting overlap to the conflict in real life. I felt that juxtaposition was really clever. 

20 - What are you currently working on?

I am working on a novel of Weird fiction, a book-length prose poem, and a television adaptation of The Flat Woman. But, mostly, at the moment, I’m mostly doing interviews and other marketing stuff to prepare for my book launch in two months.

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