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1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book just came out July 18. I don’t know how it feels yet. I’ve spent twenty years working toward a book publication. It feels surreal. Also, oddly, hard to accept? Success is, bizarrely, sometimes a harder pill to swallow than failure.
2 - How did you come to short stories first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
When I was growing up, I wanted to write screenplays. (I still want to write screenplays.) Then I studied creative writing and thought I’d write novels. But you don’t study novels in early CRW classes, you study short stories, which is awesome, but then it’s also unsustainable because no one publishes short story collections [except for the people who do but those people are fledging small presses (or bigger presses you get by lucking into an agent because you have an interlinked story collection which is basically a novel)].
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?
Sometimes it’s lighting to the heart and sometimes it’s a slow burn.
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 start with whatever sadness rises to the top that day. I’ve written two novels and am working on third and a bunch of short stories that when put together aren’t exactly interlinked but aren’t not connected.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
The first reading I did was about 18 years ago. The journal I was reading for was new, so new they printed pages from a Word doc and put it in a single binder which people could browse when they entered the room, which was not a literary event, per se, but it was a multicultural event that included a fashion show. The journal asked the readers to get up and read between breaks of the show, but they forgot about me and/or didn’t plan well so by the time it was my time, I read to my few friends who stayed all day and the editor of the journal and the other writer who I think they also forgot about. The fashion show portion ended. Most of the audience had left. We’d been there four or five hours. After I read, I was so overcome with hunger, I left and took my friends with me. We left the last reader to read just to the editor of the journal in an empty room and to this day I feel both guilty about that but also remember how desperate and confused I was during the entire day. Readings are better now! I’ve only done a handful of public readings but that seems to be picking up steam lately. Readings can be super boring or the most awesome thing you’ve been to all week. I try to be lively and entertaining when I read. I’m a work in progress.
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?
Sadness, family trauma, childhood trauma, sexual assault, anxiety, addiction, nostalgia. I think lately the question I’m trying to answer is: Is it possible to co-exist with your own bullshit? Can you reconcile your own bullshit and find a path forward?
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?
Writers can often put words to what others are feeling but can’t say. That’s the kind of writer I strive to be.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It is difficult and essential. I absolutely need an editor. Everyone needs an editor. Sometimes (I have not had this experience) editors can be heavy-handed and want to take over but 99% of them work toward making the work better.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Find the heat in your story and stay there, the more uncomfortable the better.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
The truth here is most of my short stories could be essays and vice versa. I write from personal experience. Everything I write stems from some lived experience.
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?
I work full-time, and I have a kid. I don’t have a routine. I write when I get a chance, mostly late in the evening or early in the morning (like 5 a.m. even on weekends).
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Music. I’ll go back and find music from whatever particular period of my life I’m sorting out that day. Sometimes the music is bad, but hat’s between me and my playlists.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Ashtrays. Not kidding. Cigarettes. I was a child of the 80s. Everyone smoked.
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?
Music all the way. But again, I sometimes like very bad music. I am/am not ashamed of some of the music I listen to. I’ll be like, oh hey guys, I listened to Ruston Kelly for four hours and felt the earth move. I don’t necessarily admit that I bopped along to Extreme’s Hole-Hearted.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’m a huge fan of other writers. Sometimes when I’m lagging in my own work I give up for awhile and go back to reading and almost always find the way forward by remembering what moves me when I read. The reading comes first.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’m looking for a time machine to take me back into the 80s where I plan to burst onto the scene with Jay McInerney and go to high profile literary events wearing all black, smoking Camels, and drinking expensive red wine paid for by Vintage Books while Amanda Urban’s assistant tracks me down for a cocktail lunch.
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?
Psychiatry. Counseling. I’d lean forward and ask people to tell me about the moment when they realized they were no longer a child and we’d process that profound sense of loss together. Also I would like to be a jazz singer but I can’t sing.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I literally have no other skills. My single talent in this world is to analyze my own bad choices. I am not an athlete, I can’t sing, I don’t have artistic ability, my fashion sense is poor, I don’t know how to work TikTok, no one cares if I’m drinking out of a Stanley mug-thing, and I have no rhythm.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Jonathan Escoffrey’s If
I Survive You.
I don’t get to watch a lot of my own shows. My daughter gets most of the TV time. We saw Barbie together and I openly wept at certain points. I think that counts? I also saw Promising Young Women recently (it’s already like 5 years old I think) and I loved it but later read mixed reviews so taste is always subjective.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A novel about going to a support group for people with bad dads. Revising a novel about a teenage ghost who gets trapped on a baseball field. Polishing a story collection about how losing one’s virginity is a set-up for a decade of dating failure. An essay collection about grief and loss.
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