12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ron MacLean

Ron MacLean is author of the novels Headlong and Blue Winnetka Skies, and the story collection Why the Long Face?. His fiction has appeared in GQ, Narrative, Fiction International, Best Online Fiction, and elsewhere. A story collection, WE MIGHT AS WELL LIGHT SOMETHING ON FIRE, is forthcoming Spring 2019. MacLean is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds a Doctor of Arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and teaches at Grub Street in Boston. Learn more at www.ronmaclean.net.

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

It was a total rush to have a book out. Crazy exciting. I felt kind of on top of the world. And I felt humbled, knowing how hard it is to get a book out, especially one that’s a little off-center in its approach and execution (it was a postmodern cowboy-movie novel). Each book feels different – that’s part of what I’m about, is to expand my reach, explore different subjects, themes, and forms. HEADLONG feels different in that it’s the most straightforward book I’ve written, or probably ever will write. I set out to write a classic crime novel, and while I ended up with more of a literary thriller, it’s still a book driven by a pretty relentless plot. My favorite feedback I’ve heard is from several people who read it in one sitting because they couldn’t put it down.

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

It’s what I always read as a kid, and was always my passion. Making up stories, and seeing if they would connect with people. I had a brief period where I strayed – trained and then worked as a journalist for a few years, but I came back to fiction because I thought the stories were more interesting – and more compelling – when made up. (Don’t tell Nick Young, the journalist protagonist of HEADLONG.)

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’m laughing out loud at the last part of that question. First drafts bear little if any resemblance to their final shape. It’s a circuitous process for me, and a time-consuming one. My novels have taken 7 and 5 years to produce, from conception (idea) to delivery (publication). With HEADLONG, I took an entire draft – maybe fourth draft – and literally threw the whole thing in the wastebasket, because I’d taken a foundational narrative turn that ended up being completely wrong-headed. So I just try to be patient with each project, and put in the time, trusting that at some point, something worthwhile will come out the other end. Sometimes the idea comes quickly. The writing of it, and bringing a story to fruition, never does.

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?

It depends on the project. With HEADLONG, I was working on a book from the beginning. I knew I wanted to write a crime novel, and I knew the situation I wanted to depict – a citywide labor strike, political protest movement, and how it touched the lives of three people, including an activist teen – was a large-scale idea. Always, though, it begins with one small bit that grabs my attention. In the case of Headlong, it was a short item I read in a local newspaper about $14,000 cash being stolen in a house robbery in the middle of a summer afternoon.

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. In part, I’m a ham and I love the spotlight. Mostly, I love to meet readers, and to be able to see people react to the work. Usually, we writers don’t get to see readers’ reactions.

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?

Not so much theoretical concerns (other than string theory and the logic of abstract physics), but I’m always revolving around the question of what does it mean to be a human in this world, with all the glories and faults that go with it. For the last couple of years, I have also been asking – and trying to write into an answer for – how do I write on a larger canvas? One that incorporates the larger social and political forces – power structures – that impact all our lives.

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?

I think our job as writers is to be explorers of the human condition. Advance scouts who seek to understand where we are and where we’re going, and to report back what we see.

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

Hah. Definitely essential. I’ve been lucky, so it has rarely been difficult. Mostly, the editors I’ve worked with are starting from a place where they like the work, and respect me as its creator, and want to collaborate with me to make it better. They offer suggestions. I try to be open to those suggestions. Usually, they’ve improved my work. I always appreciate their time and attention on it. A couple times, for short stories that were taken by magazines, we’ve had disagreements and I’ve chosen to capitulate to something I didn’t like. Then I’ve gone back and done it my way when it comes to the book version.

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

Easy. “Make opportunities for each other.” Judy Johnson, one of my grad school professors. From day one, she encouraged us to think in terms of community, in terms of how we can work with and help each other. I’ve tried to live that ever since. For me, it’s so important in a vocation that’s mostly solitary, to make a concerted effort to get outside myself and be an active (giving) part of a community.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (novels to short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?

To me, novels and short stories are very different animals. So different. And it always takes me a while to shift gears. A good story, even one that feels leisurely, requires such compression, that it’s a completely different rhythm and mindset. That said, I love moving between them. It’s not easy for me, but the appeal is powerful: time spent in the one brings me back with fresh energy and perspective to the other.

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 a loose routine. My best practice is to write two hours a day, five or six days a week. When I’m in a good groove, that’s what I’m doing. Consistency with that allows lots of progress – it’s amazing how much work you can get done in a year with that kind of commitment. I like that time frame because it’s realistic for my life, and it allows my brain to percolate in the background on what I’ve done, which almost always yields an interesting start for the next day.

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

Friends. My writing group. I’ll whine to them, and they will either a) write or call with sympathetic encouragement or b) mock me and tell me to buck up. Either one tends to work. I will also often pull a favorite book from the shelf and just immerse myself in a story I love until I get over myself, which takes less long as I get older. I think the fear of death keeps me from getting stalled out much.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Beef, slow-roasting. Is that bad?

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?

Um, all of the above. I’m a huge music fan, and it always inspires me. For a long time, every short story I wrote had a “theme song,” one I’d listen to again and again as I was writing the story. And a story that will be in my new collection, about a blind rabbit escape artist trained by Houdini, also has a character who’s a butcher who’s retired from theoretical physics. So there’s a lot of string theory in that one.

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

Jeanette Winterson, Donald Barthelme, Gertrude Stein, for sure. Dostoyevsky. Aimee Bender. Flannery O’Connor. I read her collection of essays, Mystery and Manners, about every two years.

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

Climb Half-Dome at Yosemite National Park.

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 LOVE to play power forward for the Boston Celtics. I’m small, but stalwart and fierce. Can you get me a tryout? I would probably have stayed in journalism, with a focus on investigative journalism. I admire the hell out of the profession, and I enjoyed it, and I think it’s important work.

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

It’s all I ever wanted to do, except for about a month when I was five years old and wanted to play middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. My wife kind of hates that I’ve always known. She’s not one of those people. It’s much harder for her, and I say helpful things like “how can anyone not know what they want to do?”

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

I’ve got a pretty high bar for great. I won’t call a book great until I’ve read it at least twice. So I’d have to say Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation. Similarly with movies, in terms of multiple viewings before I’ll call them great. I’m gonna cheat and say two: Boyhood, and a classic Russian film I saw again recently in a new 70mm print, Andrei Rublev.

20 - What are you currently working on?

Helping the publisher with marketing my new story collection, WE MIGHT AS WELL LIGHT SOMETHING ON FIRE, that comes out June 5, 2019 from Braddock Avenue Books. And collaborating on a trilogy of psychological horror novellas with a writer pal. 

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Heidi Seaborn

Heidi Seaborn is the author the award-winning debut book of poetry Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, March 2019), Editorial Director for The Adroit Journal and a New York University MFA candidate. Since Heidi started writing in 2016, she’s won or been shortlisted for nearly two dozen awards including the International Rita Dove Award in Poetry and published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Penn Review and Nimrod, a chapbook and a political pamphlet. She graduated from Stanford University and is on the board of Tupelo Press. heidiseabornpoet.com

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

In my previous life, I founded a couple companies. When someone chooses to invest in your idea or in your work, it’s an amazing validation but it’s also a responsibility to make a company or a book financially successful. With a book, something very personal becomes an enterprise. My chapbook Finding My Way Home was published last April and now, less than a year later, I’ve got my first full-length collection, Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} coming out. These two books talk to one another, but my work is constantly evolving as a I learn and flex as a poet. This time around, I feel there is more at stake because it is my debut book and because poetry has gone from part-time to profession for me.

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

I wrote poetry as a kid, as a teen and then stopped altogether for decades. About five years ago, I decided to take a fiction writing class thinking I might write a novel. I wrote short stories that read like long poems. Then a little over three years ago, I attended a poetry workshop and have been writing ever since.

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 generally write in bursts, then run fallow for a while. In the lapses, I tend to the other aspects of my writing life (as an Editor, reading, submitting, writing reviews and interviews, etc.). I find that I write into projects—meaning that I discover myself pressing on an issue, subject or idea as I draft poems and eventually it draws my attention. Is there something more here that I want to really dive into? Is it a series, is a book? I don’t know until I’m in deep. For example, I wrote a series of poems in a burst over the summer of 2017 that I thought was a chapbook. Maybe it was, but it became the second section in Give a Girl Chaos {see what she can do} and that’s exactly where they needed to end up.

As for poems, some just write themselves and I just try to get the hell out of the way. Those often require minor revisions. The majority of my poems are written quickly but spend a good deal of their childhood being revised, researched, revised again before they get to go outside and play.

4 - Where does a poem 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?

Comedians look for funny everywhere and in everything. Poets do the same thing for inspiration. I keep my eyes wide, ears perked for the thing that needs to be written. I write poems that accumulate sometimes in to piles of poems, sometimes into a unified collection. To set out to write a book is too daunting. I take it poem by poem. I have a series of poems that I am writing now that may lead to a book if I keep going. But it’s a fragile creation and it could just dry up at any point. I’m hopeful, I have a good start, but I can’t see the end.

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

I love to read! I especially love to read to an audience of civilians—non-poets—who are uncomfortable with poetry. I want to make it accessible, fun, impactful. I tell little stories about the poems, bring them into the making of the poem, give them ownership. I find it’s useful to read new work out loud to more writerly audiences. It helps me discover what works and what doesn’t. The oral nature of poetry is really important to me. I read aloud as I write. I need to hear the sound. I’m fortunate to have had decades of public presenting experience, so there’s that too.

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?

The larger questions that roll around in my brain lately concern power. Who holds it, how we regain it, how to find one’s power after trauma and tragedy and how to empower others? I think about this as a woman of course, but also more expansively as we are living in chaotic times. How do we muscle our way through this chaos? As individuals, as a society, as residents of this earth?

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?

The writer has to write what they know, write what they witness. Not every writer needs to assume a political stance, but writing itself is a political act, particularly in some parts of the world. We can write about our garden, and it may be about the garden, or it might be about walls and borders or it might be about power subordination.

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

I have lovely editors who work hard to bring our books to market and ensure their success. We push each other, but it is with the same goal in mind.

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

Read, read, read. It’s the cliché that works.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

When I’m writing, I hunker down at my desk in the kitchen and just write. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I may not get dressed, I may not eat. But there’s coffee, always coffee. Recently, a poem came while I was preparing dinner. I tried to capture it as quickly as possible and not ruin our meal. Sometimes, sacrifices are made! Otherwise, I try to get my emails, the business-y stuff out of the way in the morning. Then read or revise in the afternoons. I wish I could write every morning like William Stafford did and so many others. Maybe one day.

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

Usually, reading other poets unsticks me. I see something I want to try or am reminded of an experience to write about. I’m in the NYU MFA program and need to be writing fresh work constantly and against deadlines. As a burst writer, I’m not always able to turn it on for a deadline. When that happens, I go through all my scraps and rejects and see if I there is something to resurrect and revise it into a real poem.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Salt air. I live on Puget Sound. I wake up to the smell of sea. But I grew up a few miles from here in a house in the woods—the damp wet earth, and scent of fir trees. Eau de Northwest.

13 - 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?

Nature always, including the humans and human nature. My work is often grounded in the natural world and the body.

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

That is a constantly changing answer. Whoever I am reading now. Currently a lot of Glück. But as Poetry Editor for The Adroit Journal and in general, I read what is being written right now, hot off the press. Zadie Smith has said that to be a good writer you need to write new. To write new you need to know what’s being written now.

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

Travel in South America.

16 - 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 did something else for well over thirty years. I worked in communications, marketing and media becoming a senior executive, living all over the world. Been there. Done that. Loved it. Happy to have moved on.

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

I guess I’d have to answer that differently since I did do something else for so long. What made me return to writing after forever? I felt restless. The minute I invited poetry back into my life it was as if my head exploded with images. The images became poems and I haven’t looked back since. If you had asked me five years ago if I would become a poet, I would have shaken my head and said, nah that was my teenage dream. I feel like a teenager again!

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

I’m bound to disappoint because I’m up to my ears in required academic reading, whether it’s poetry or books on form and craft. But I just finished reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. It was written eons ago, in 1970. He was a poet then and as he wrote this book in the persona of Billy the Kid, he slipped into fictional passages. The experience opened up fiction for him, and the rest is history. All these decades later, the book is incredibly compelling—as a brilliant example of persona, of historical fiction, of hybrid experimentation—all in vogue now. Plus, his lyrical voice set loose on the open range of the Wild, Wild West is wonderful!

Beautiful Boy broke my heart, may not be Great with a capital G, but impactful for me.

19 - What are you currently working on?

A series of persona poems, historical in nature, possibly hybrid in form. And my MFA. I am hopeful that they are one and the same in the end. Fingers crossed at this stage.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Caleb Michael Sarvis

Caleb Michael Sarvis is a writer from Jacksonville, Florida. He is the author of Dead Aquarium (Mastodon Publishing 2019), the managing editor for Bridge Eight Press, and co-host of the Drunken Book Review Podcast. His work has appeared in Hobart, Saw Palm, Volt, and others. You can follow him on Twitter @cmsarvis.

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

CMS: It was really just a matter of what I was reading. I’ve never been a huge fan of non-fiction, and while I liked and even dabbled with poetry, I was much more interested in narrative. I didn’t really read short fiction until college, but it was the first time I remember loving the discussion of it all.

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?

CMS: Time it takes to start something … that feels like a weird idea I can’t quite wrap my head around. I’ll say that I do table some ideas for later, but when it comes down to starting something, I don’t know, I just do it. I open a word doc and I type. It’s rare that there’s a large amount of distance between my first drafts and the final product. I tinker a lot with individual sentences, with cutting chunks out, but the gist of my stories aren’t that far removed from the original draft. I might change some names, give it a new title, but I’m not one for making a lot of notes. I know some writers save a new draft after every edit and that’s obscene to me. I’m a one living word doc kind of guy.

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?

CMS: The only time I thought I was working on a “book” was while writing the novel I’ve just finished. Otherwise I try to focus on one short story at a time. I don’t care to think about how they relate to each other until later, after they’re all finished, and I’m beginning to realize, “Oh, these few here kind of talk to one another.”

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

CMS: I enjoy doing readings, but only because it’s an excuse to talk about the work after. I’m much more interested in grabbing a beer and talking to people about process and craft and the little things we fight with while trying to write something. Personally, I’m not a great reader. Mostly because I write matter-of-fact sentences most of the time, so when I read them out loud, I sound like I’m droning on to myself.

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?

CMS: Na, not really. Sometimes I get a little curious about structure or form. I’m obsessed with what’s real versus what’s not, and whether that really matters in the first place, and I think all of my writing plays with that, but I don’t necessarily mean it to. I’m just a weirdo who suspects he doesn’t really exist.

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?

CMS: A writer’s only responsibility is to write, and do it well, and help other writers write well, and read other writers’ work and then to keep on writing and reading and writing.

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

CMS: I think an outside editor is incredibly essential, and sure it’s difficult, because they are going to want to change things you don’t want to change, but so what if it’s difficult? Writing is hard, and editing is hard, but if you want to write a good thing, you’re going to have to do that little bit of work.

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

CMS: I told Jason Ockert in a bar that I wanted to be great, and he told me to stop letting my ego do the writing. I still want to be great, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun writing for myself, rather than an audience, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories to essays to sports writing)? What do you see as the appeal?

CMS: It hasn’t been easy at all. I envy poets and essay writers for the care they give their work and the way they can suck me in no matter the subject matter. But as hard as it is, I think you have to challenge yourself. Poets have always given the best craft lectures, I think, or at least I’ve always learned the most from poets. I feel most confident in writing a single sentence, I think it’s the strongest part of my work, and so poetic sensibility is an important part of fiction writing for me. The sports writing is just because I love talking about sports.

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?

CMS: My writing routine is to read a lot, get inspired, and then write until that inspiration goes away. If I write 50 words, so be it, at least I wrote that day.

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

CMS: Running, coffee, more reading.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

CMS: What the hell, man. Um … baseball clay? But also peppermint oils because that’s how my wife wakes me up in the morning. She’s got one of those diffusers and that shit rules.

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?

CMS: I say this a lot, but Calvin and Hobbes, the narrative structure of a single comic strip, how Bill Watterson never bothered to explain a whole lot, all that matters to me. And cartoons in general? I’m a big fan of active verbs, and I think the motions of cartoons have given me an awesome bank from which to pull from when I’m writing a very active sequence of events.

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

CMS: The mentors I’ve had along the way really matter to me. I think it’s natural, but they are the example I follow and I like chasing them (the same way I chased my Dad while playing baseball). So Kevin Moffett, Jason Ockert, Marcus Pactor, Corinna Vallianatos, Jessica Anthony, Jeff Parker, and writers like them.

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

CMS: I’d like to write a good chapbook of poetry. I’ve got a large collection of shitty poems. It’s good practice for me, but one day I’d like to start writing good poems and publish something meaningful in that regard.

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?

CMS: I still dream of playing baseball, haha. But if not that, I might have opened a coffee bar and pursued something a little more entrepreneurial in that sense. I like the puzzle of business: How do I keep this thing alive?

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

CMS: I love reading. I love stories. I love making shit. It just kind of works.

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

CMS: This is tough because I’ve been reading a lot of great things, but the last book I read that I can’t stop talking about was The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson. I will talk about that whenever with whomever. Talk about a poetic sensibility in regards to fiction writing … Wow. I might reread it soon. Last great film? I don’t watch too many movies these days, but I rewatch Birdman every few months. I just like it. I like talking about it.

20 - What are you currently working on?

CMS: I just finished a novel about this guy, the death of his wife, the death of Major League Baseball, and what it means to let the past die and yadda, yadda. Now I’m just looking for a home. So, reader, if that’s your speed. Let me know. Maybe we can play catch.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;