1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I feel like, "Well, if nothing else, there is a book on my shelf with my name on it." It's like being one step closer to a good death. It also opens up a fantasy world where sometime, 60 years from now, some rando who is not even born yet might happen upon my book, read the stories, have a laugh or some deep thought, and, in that small way, I will have influenced the world from my grave. This is an excellent and creepy thought. I try not to think how there will probably be no books in 60 years. No. That is not part of my fantasy world. Also, it was pretty cool when I was at my book launch with Riddle Fence and, instead of reading off my phone or fumbling around with a stack of crumpled papers, I just pulled out my book, like some suave fox, opened the book to the appropriate page, and read. It felt pretty legit. It was not me who thought of this, though. One of the other authors there who noticed that feature of book-havery. I forget if it was Jennifer Newhook, Tia McLennan, or Danielle Devereaux. Whoever she was, she was a genius, and you should read her book too.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I do write poetry, but it's hard to do it sometimes without feeling a little pretentious. I have an unreasonable poetry prejudice that was drilled into my head at an early age by my poetry-hating dad. So perhaps, in that way, I write poetry as a form of adolescent rebellion. Actually, I have a book of poetry that I am currently shopping around, so maybe I should stop talking so much crap about poetry. Non-fiction is just off for me. I hate to be constrained by the truth.
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?
It usually starts with a quote or a line. Then, I build a mind map around it. I write lots of emails to myself about random thoughts, and I put the word "Miliza" in the subject line. That is my secret code that the email is about a story. So when I am ready to write, I search all the "Miliza Mail" for my idea threads. Miliza is my grandmother's childhood nickname. I don't know why I chose that. She was not much of a writer. She let me read her diary once. It was mainly about the weather and the people she met in town. Super boring. Anyways. Once a Miliza thread gets too long, I start to get stressed out, so I get out these colored cue cards and write out the ideas. Then I arrange them on the dining room table into some sort of order. Then, I type that into my laptop as an outline. Then I fill in the gaps. That's the hardest part. Filling in those damn gaps. The easy part is the cue cards. The glue that holds them together? That's the real challenge. But the cue card thing is for longer projects. For flash fiction and shorter pieces, I have been known to sit down and bang it out in one sitting. I guess I am smart enough to keep track of all the moving pieces for shorter pieces, but I'm lost for anything over 1500 words. That's when cue cards hit the scene.
4 - Where does a work of fiction 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 also a filmmaker, so most of my stories start with an image or a line of dialogue, and I build the story around it. I commute to my day job on my bike, and during that time, I can think. I suck on stories like hard candy, dissolving them slowly over days in my mind. I often stop on the side of the road and type little fragments into my phone. The problem is that sometimes, they are hard to decode later. I have learned to write out my thoughts like I am spelling them for an 8-year-old. Otherwise, I return to them and think, ‘WTF is this?’ I still have something on my phone that says, "Moon lungs crash teeth." Sometimes, I still wonder what I was thinking when I wrote that.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I went to an arts high school. I love performance. Much of the stuff I write is meant to be read aloud on a stage, by a campfire, or alone in my living room. I perform everything for myself early in the edits. Bouncing it off the walls gives me a different perspective. It lets me see the holes and the laggy bits. I think the best writing sounds as good as it looks. I also enjoy the experience of sharing stories live. It's timeless. It's lizard-brain stuff. I think, on some level, live storytelling is a human need. To be honest, a lot of why I write stuff is so I can have an excuse to get together in some sticky-floored, dimly lit space and legitimately hang out with other weirdos, just sharing our words and letting it all hang out.
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, ironically, fiction writing is a search for what is real. It's about trying to dig into the heart of our existence and discover what is truly common to all of us, even if we express it in disparate ways. It's trying to figure out what drives characters, trying to understand them by putting them into novel situations. Fiction is a thought experiment of the human experience. The fantasy teaches us about reality. For me, it's driving toward some universal acceptance. A lot of my characters are rough around the edges. But understanding what motivates them makes me love them even when they misbehave. It also makes me forgive myself, in a way, for times I have personally misbehaved. When I understand my characters, I understand my most hated neighbors a little better. Sometimes, I am my own most hated neighbor. So, it can be therapeutic.
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 think writers need to be aware of what they are reinforcing or countering. Some of the bravest writers challenge the status quo; they are those who bring a fresh perspective and break apart the literary bird-wires that the other parrots stand on. Art drives thought. It influences public opinion and politics. By presenting fictional situations, you can make folks consider things they might be resistant to thinking about in reality because when it’s "just fiction," it's safe. But you can't un-think a thought. Once you've had it, it's there forever. You can't help but apply it to your real life. What I mean to say is, if racist lady-haters read my fiction and my crafty literary guiles trick them into liking it, slowly but surely, things can change.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with outside editors. I feel like once I have submitted a story to someone, it is no longer mine. It becomes collaborative. It belongs to everyone who touches it. So I don't feel defensive when I see my drafts changing. The original story is always in the original draft if I want to visit it. What happens after is it becomes a different animal. Outside eyes are essential to making a story strong, for giving it teeth so it can protect itself from the discerning eyes of readers. Editors fill in the story’s cracks, make it resilient and fierce.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Just put it out there. Let
someone else read it. But tell yourself you don't care what they think. You can
take their opinion or leave it. Once your work is out there, there it is. The
world officially knows you are not typical. Your secret is revealed. You are
free.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to screenplays to short fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
Very easy. I have switched genres frequently. I have entirely rewritten many pieces in a different genre because the new medium was better for the story. I wrote a flash fiction about this fisherman who was dying but wanted to buy a new truck. It was called "The Long Haul". Many editors passed over it, and I had pretty much shelved it, but then I rewrote it into a short screenplay, and it won all sorts of awards. The screen was just a better home for that story; it was just waiting for me to realize it.
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 have no routine. My life is too chaotic. I have a day job with rotating hours and a family full of folks with ADD. Trying to maintain order and routine is a recipe for disappointment. I think my routine is just giving myself blanket permission to stop what I am doing at any given point in the day to write down an idea and email it to myself. When I find time, I open the email and run with it. Also, I have a very supportive family that can distract themselves quite effectively if I disappear to write things down. I also sign up for those online one-time generative workshops, just to get something granular in a file with its own name on my computer. Because once that is there, I want to complete it. I find the time in the margins because my mind will not rest otherwise.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I sign up for one of those contests where they give you a prompt and a time limit. There have been many times that I have become convinced my creative well has finally run dry, and then one of those contests kicked my ass back into gear. It’s true what they say. Writing crap is better than writing nothing. I think a lot of writer's block is just anxiety. Like there’s this blinking cursor in front of you that's just whispering, "yousuck-yousuck-yousuck," and you start to believe it. But if you can push that little demon down the page, it loses its hold over you. And the next thing you know, you have a draft. And that draft might suck rocks, but it's something. And once there's something on the page, the anxiety ends. All you have to do is edit. I find editing way less stressful because by the time I’m editing, I already feel like a writer again.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Lilacs. They used to grow outside my window. And mildew. From my grandpa's books.
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?
Defiantly music. I often play music while I am writing. I don't listen to what I like. I listen to what my characters like or something that sets the mood of the scene I am trying to conjure. I guess it's the filmmaker in me again. Every story needs a soundtrack. There have been times when I'm writing something, and its falling flat. I'll put on a song and, voila, there it is, the jewel I was looking for. Music lets your associations go loose. It enables you to spin around the way required to be creative. A lot of creativity is the ability to be disjointed in an interesting way. Music puts you into that space if you are the kind of person who is not super into drugs.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work or simply your life outside of your work?
I am a Miriam Toews fangirl. She is a total inspiration to me because she threads that needle between comedy and tragedy so elegantly. I wish I could write a book as epic as All My Puny Sorrows. Also, I appreciate the friendship of other writers. When I was in St. John’s for my book launch, I met many great writers. One was Susie Taylor, who wrote a fantastic cover blurb for me. We were sitting with Tia, Jennifer, and Danielle in The Battery Café talking about writing and life, and it was like we were all buds from way back, even though we had just met. It was a perfect afternoon, the kind of thing you carry in your pocket for a future grey day. Then, a week later, Susy sent me a picture of all our books together in the bookstore. What a perfect visual metaphor! Right now, I am reading Susy's book, which is awesome. You should also read her book.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Get interviewed by some super top-drawer literary program and shake things up a little. They would ask me some subtly brilliant questions, and I would be “this close” to using f-words at all times, and then afterward, they would tell me how "refreshing" my take was, and I would smile because, at that moment, I would be able to read their thoughts and their thoughts would be "Woah. This gal is messed up. Somebody get me a latte with Margaret Atwood, stat!”
Also, I would like to be famous enough to be disrespected by Eminem. Bring it, Slim!
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 would be a heavy metal rock star in my dream parallel life. Big bangs, ripped jeans, and rocking on forever. I would never sell out to some reality show. I would never get plastic surgery. I would go full Robert Smith (from The Cure) and become the visual representation of the demon I had always implied was inside of me. When my popularity declined, I would go to political conventions and yell all sorts of inappropriate/idealistic stuff until I got arrested on misdemeanors, and People Magazine would do a “fall from grace” piece featuring my mugshot. "Sources close to me” would speculate that I had finally gone off the edge, but little would they know I was living happily on a giant houseboat on the shores of Lake Superior with my partner and kids and all sorts of exotic reptiles, cackling with the knowledge that I had invested wisely in the 90s and could ride the rest of my life on the coattails of my prudent financial choices.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Loneliness. I think writing fiction comes naturally because I am an only child who lived rurally and had busy parents. For most of my early life, I needed elaborate fantasies for company. I made stories in my head as a means of survival so I wouldn't feel so isolated.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I am currently enjoying the hell out of Susie Taylor's book Vigil. It's funny. It's crafty. It's just the right amount of bizarre. The last great film I watched was Wim Wenders' Perfect Days. It was a meditative film with stunning cinematography about a reflective guy who cleans Tokyo toilets. I convinced my teenage son to see it with me. He was like, "OMG. Do I have to? It's just gonna be one of those crap adult films where literally nothing happens, and you will want to talk to me for 10 hours straight about the symbolism." But he came with me because he is basically a good human and also I told him, "It’s going to be awesome! It was nominated for an Oscar!" My son was absolutely correct in his summary. Still, the film was a multisensory triumph. 10/10. The best part of it, though, was the experience of seeing it with a dis-impressed teen. At the film's beginning, they have to set up the protagonist's routine as he cleans eight successive toilets in silence. In the midst of this, my son leans over and whispers in my ear, "You're right, Mom. This s**t is riveting," in the snarkiest tone imaginable. Then I started seeing the film through his eyes, accompanied by his sarcastic soundtrack, and I started laughing my ass off in the theatre. This caused my son to be absolutely mortified, which made it all the more funny. Art is a beautiful, beautiful, feed-forward cycle of joy.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A novel! My cue card ring overfloweth! I started drafting it in a little house on Middle Battery Road right after my book launch. The protagonist is loosely based on my great aunt Georgina who lived on the edge of things in Detroit. It concerns her complicated friendship with the bad-assed dude who did her nails and their quest for a red 1968 Cadillac.
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