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'm not sure. Feels true both that it changed my life in massive ways and also not at all? On a basic level, it feels validating. Like someone cares, like pursuing this is worth it. I think my most recent work feels even more me than anything that came before it. Like I've, to some degree, found my voice. I'm more confident as a writer, and also just as a person, and I think all of that shines through in more confident prose too. It's probably more earnest and more open-hearted, maybe even more fascinated by my obsessions than ever — nostalgia, friendship, growing up, storytelling.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Fiction is just always what felt most interesting to me. I write nonfiction, and a little poetry, and read some of those too, but fiction is generally what I want to read, what most excites me. When I first started reading for pleasure during college and then as I graduated, it was novels — Fight Club, The Beach... and then Kavalier and Clay, The Corrections, Geek Love... — and from there I found McSweeney's and that was all the stuff that just lit up my brain and felt exciting and made me want to read more and mroe, and also write.
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?
Everything feels a little different. I wrote a new story over winter break and it came out pretty fast and the first draft wasn't that different from the published version. But I'd been thinking about it for weeks, rolling it over and over and over in my brain. I was busy with classes and I'd told myself I was taking the semester "off" from writing, mostly so I wouldn't feel guilty if/when I didn't while busy, but also to kind of replenish the tank, as it were. And I held myself to it, which meant once my classes finished, this story just spilled out of me pretty fast. It took a couple more drafts of moving pieces around and tightening some language and a few deletions and additions, but it was largely there.
On the other end of that spectrum is a longer project like a novel. I finished a novel last summer and have been thinking about and wanting to start a new one (but was giving myself the semester off!). I have this novel that I started a few years ago but then got overwhelmed with and busy with other stuff. So I've returned to that, and what I thought was "a few years ago" was actually 2017, and new writing is going well, but I can't imagine having a draft done sooner than next summer, and could be way longer than that, and so by then it will have been "in-process" in one way or another for almost a decade??
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?
Again, it's a little all over the place. With a novel, I normally know it's a novel from the beginning. With stories, I'm usually just writing them here and there and then at some point they start to coalesce into a "book." With my essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, it is all personal essays, mostly short-shorts. I don't think I ever thought those would make up or even be included in a book. They felt like fun little off-shoots as breaks from or when I was getting frustrated with my novel. I really really love everything Autofiction is doing and I love that they are usually these short, tight, fun books and so In-Between kinda happened by accident, with me just wanting to work with Michael Wheaton and Autofocus. I looked around and had a lot more of these short-shorts than I'd realized, and so I just sent him all this stuff and went, "Is there a book here?" There wasn't — not quite, not yet, lol — but he helped me find one.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings! I don't think they're part of my creative process really though. I do think a lot of what I'm trying to do, in both fiction and non-, is for the writing to sound like you're being told a story, and so that usually goes well for doing readings but it starts from wanting to capture that on the page.
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?
With nonfiction, it is often something pretty explicit and specific to the essay — Why did I do that? Why did I respond the way I did? Why do I keep thinking about this? With fiction, there's probably versions of those same questions, though they're much more subconscious. I rarely ask it consciously, but an underlying question that I think is often driving me is how to lean into and convey this fascination with and tendency toward nostalgia that I have, in new and interesting ways. How can I complicate it, how can I make it interesting and engaging, and not just fall into the trap of lazy, one-dimensional sentimentality.
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?
Oh, I don't know. This isn't something I think or worry about. My role is to write. And to promote and encourage and champion writers and writing I love. The larger culture isn't really my business.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I love it. I love working with an editor who reads a work excitedly and deeply and curiously. One of my favorite parts of writing is working with an editor and having them push a piece to get even better. (And, being an editor, when I can help a writer push a piece to get even better.)
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Hm. I don't too much think of writing in terms of advice. That said, there's this George Saunders essay, "Rise, Baby, Rise," that I love a lot. There are two titled subsections: “A Story Is Made of Things that Fling Our Little Car Forward” & “Ending is Stopping Without Sucking.” That's kinda everything there is right there!
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to essays to memoir)? What do you see as the appeal?
It's felt pretty natural! I think I moved into nonfiction largely because that's mostly what I teach. One of my most common classes I teach now is an intro cnf class, The Art of the Essay, though my teaching load used to be mostly, and often entirely, comp. But I taught a personal narrative essay in that class, and after doing that for semesters and years, I got inspired. By what my students were writing, and by the readings I was assigning and our discussions of them, and also just the way that I taught them. At some point, I think some version of "I do a pretty good job teaching these, I should try to take some of my own lessons and advice and write them."
My fiction often starts with something that happened to me, something I've observed, something I'm thinking about. And then the process, and the joy, is playing these games of "what if" and letting myself extrapolate and fictionalize and really take it from there. When I first started writing essays, I would have these moments or memories or whatever from my life and I would be unsure if it felt like something usable for fiction or non. But the more I wrote both, the more it started to just feel natural and instinctual.
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 don't have much of a routine. With teaching, it's pretty catch-as-catch-can. During the summer, I do often try to write every morning, more or less first thing, usually for anywhere from 2-4 hours. Five days a week feels "right." But that is ideal, and few things ever are. I've had moments of "write every day" practice, but those probably feel more the exception than the rule. This semester, I have classes Monday-Thursday, and it is only a couple weeks in, but I've so far designated Fridays as writing days. I go to a coffeeshop, write longhand for a couple hours. On the one hand, one day a week feels so minimal. On the other hand, every little bit counts, and any kind of consistency is better than nothing! If I can keep it up, I should have as little as a quarter, and maybe as much as half, of a new novel drafted! Which would then be an incredible headstart to take into summer.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Read, read, read. Live life. Do stuff. Read some more.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Rain on concrete.
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?
EVERYTHING influences me. Nature, music, visual art, TV and movies, being active. I find just being a human in the world incredibly influential to creating art. I go see live music and some part of me thinks, "How do I translate this — this singer's growl, this lighting setup, this feeling of being in the audience... — to the page?"
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Feels almost caricature-like, but Jesus' Son is incredibly important for me, and the book I most often return to for inspiration. In general, everything I read becomes pretty important to my work. I also spend a lot of time and energy with various editorial work — HAD and Short Story, Long, specifically now. I love reading submissions and getting excited about and accepting work and working with writers.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I don't have any specific goals, to be honest. That said, a kinda joke-y answer that is also serious: get an agent, sell a book to a bigger press, make some money from writing, be read more people, win major awards, be championed as a great writer... all that shit, lol.
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'd love to say something fancy and cool like movie director, or even actor, though those never actually felt like "real" jobs. That said, "writer" never really did either... and it still isn't! (Not in the paying any bills, anyway.)
If I hadn't become a writer, I bet I'd just have some kind of manager job at, like, a book printer or something. Which is where I worked before I went back to school for my MFA. But even that is book related, as is a bookstore, which is the other thing that jumped to mind.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I don't know that I ever knew it about myself but I think I always liked telling stories and being something of a storyteller. Entertaining people, holding the attention of an audience, making people laugh. And then in college, I discovered these novels, and then lit journals and short stories, and it all just immediately felt exciting and like something I wanted to do and be involved with, and then when I started, it just felt... right. And as I've moved through life, nothing else really quite has.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I've been raving about this book a lot on social media the last few weeks, but I loved Amy Stuber's Sad Grownups. I'm only about 1/4 of the way into it, but Ben Shattuck's story collection The History of Sound is totally knocking me out and I foresee raving about it for a long time to come. And earlier this year I read Bright Lights, Big City and was surprised just how much I loved it.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I'm in the beginning stages of a genre-y novel that is a contemporary riff on the Jacob and Esau story from the Bible, set in 07/08.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
No comments:
Post a Comment