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JOE GALVÁN was born in 1984 and grew up in South Texas. He has been writing since he was a child. He graduated from Texas Tech University in 2006 and contemplated becoming a lawyer before settling on cultural anthropology, with forays into ethnomusicology and etiquette studies. He has been publishing zines for nearly 20 years. He just finished writing his second novella, In The Realm of the Desert Gods, which draws from the rich history and culture of the borderlands of South and West Texas. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2012, where he began writing his perzine Galván in Portland, which explores not only his own personal history in and out of the city, but also Portland’s place in time and space. He began volunteering at the IPRC in late 2014. He has been writing a zine series on modern manners, Etiquette, since mid-2016. If you’d like copies of his zines, or just want to say hi, you can email him at joe@daelis.com. You can also follow his Instagram account, @agrestic. INTERVIEWER What are you looking at? GALVÁN What am I looking at? -- Easy answer, I am looking at a pretty piece of holographic paper hanging on my wall INTERVIEWER You still produce a lot of your own work even though you're working full time. How? GALVÁN You know, that is an unfortunate product of our time--late capitalism both demands us to work, and then punishes us for not working. As an artist, I feel like it's a moral imperative to make art in spite of having 'real work'. And not feeling sorry for it either, especially if that art contradicts expectations about me as a working person. I literally run from my office to any venue--ANY which one--which provides an opportunity to be creative (singing at choir, running a popup restaurant, writing at the IPRC). INTERVIEWER Are there any windows on your floor? GALVÁN Tons. I work in a glass box that looks down on all of Portland. Pretty. But also pretty terrifying😞 INTERVIEWER So actually Going somewhere, making an effort to get yourself into a creative space, is that key? How high up are you? GALVÁN There is no other option for me. I live with housemates so sometimes I need to be around *different* people, especially if those people are other creatives (like yourself). I'm 12 floors up. We felt an earthquake here once and the windows rattled. That was wild. INTERVIEWER Do you ever feel powerful being so high up or mostly terrified? GALVÁN I don't ever feel empowered by working here. Important, maybe. Responsible, absolutely. But never powerful. INTERVIEWER “Expectations as a working person.” How did you overcome feeling sorry for making art when you’re supposed to be making money? GALVÁN I learned long long ago, that your work, no matter what you do, is sanctifying. It is a gift from God (if you believe in God). Work, but especially creative work, liberates not only yourself but other people. And if you feel bad that you're not making six figures as an artist/writer, then you need to re-evaluate why you're an artist to begin with. Americans have this idea that work ought to enable you to buy more and in theory climb the social ladder, but the reality is that we're all suffering under capitalism equally. INTERVIEWER What is Galvan in Portland? GALVÁN Oh my gosh! My zine. The zine that I started writing in 2012. INTERVIEWER What were you striving for in writing it? GALVÁN I first started writing it in October 2012. I wanted to unpack the fear, confusion and doubt that moving to Portland brought about--I had been in a relationship that failed spectacularly, I was houseless, I was struggling with mental illness and addiction, and writing that zine was a way to both really understand Portland, the people that come here looking for acceptance and love and understanding, and maybe documenting some of my own personal successes and failures that arose from that relationship. INTERVIEWER How did you use writing it as a way to understand Portland? What was it like starting a relationship with a new city and documenting it? GALVÁN It was very much an enjoyable experience getting to know Portland by writing about it. I’d plan out days where I’d walk through neighborhoods, and if I had any money (which I didn’t have for a long time), I’d try a food cart or a cup of coffee and write about what I saw. Portland has a mystique for each person that inhabits the city. For me, it was historical and social (like really learning how this city has been shaped and built up from the ground). The relationship was primarily related to me in terms of historic places, like settlement sites and houses, and sometimes events (like the hanging of Danford Balch at the end of SW Salmon St in 1845). And then I'd look at myself, and see how I, as a colonized person, as a fat person, as a queer person, as a person of color, was living out my own Portland settlement experience, and documenting the various ironies between my history and the history of the city overall. INTERVIEWER Is it disorienting walking those ironies? GALVÁN Oh absolutely. I think the first year I felt like this was such a nightmare place. It is in a lot of ways. People come and go so much here -- a job doesn’t work out, or a relationship ends, and people you thought you’d know forever just leave. Then there’s having to fit in with people you’ve never had anything in common with. You feel like you don't belong. But then everyone says you do. And then you make friends. And very soon, you find yourself somehow acquainted with this city and its geography, and that's how you come to love Portland, in a weird and absolutely disorienting way. You know, someone asked me about a restaurant I’d never been to -- this had been a visitor to Portland from back east -- and you know what I told them? The price location, and how much its awful brunch menu cost. Can you beat that? INTERVIEWER Do you miss Texas? GALVÁN I'm wearing Texas socks right now. I miss barbecues, the warmth of the sun, tank tops, bougainvillea, palm trees. Thunderstorms. Orange blossoms. Jacaranda. My mother. I miss hearing Tejano music with her. Hearing and seeing Spanish everywhere. I miss 5 o' clock coffee with my relatives. I miss the solitude that only being on the border can bring. I miss Texas a lot. INTERVIEWER "If the act of love is in itself an act of forgiveness, then it would seem so very difficult to even love things to begin with, to motivate oneself to love again," from Galvan in Portland VIII. Why is love in itself an act of forgiveness? GALVÁN Real love is selfless. You don't ever really think about yourself when you *really* love someone. At least that's the way I think. Love forgives because it has no choice. INTERVIEWER Why is self-care important? GALVÁN Self-care is survival. There is literally no other way to make it in this world if you cannot care for yourself. People need you to survive, in more ways than you care to know. We need people to survive, to continue to make art, so that we can have a better world to live in. Rupaul is absolutely right about learning to love oneself in order to love others. However I think a lot of people -- primarily the young gay things these days -- confuse self-care for narcissism. Self-care is selfless self-care. Be good to yourself, be kind to yourself, but be reasonable. INTERVIEWER Why start a series on etiquette? GALVÁN "Etiquette" started out of conversations about rude behavior in public I’d observed, such as manspreading. A girlfriend of mine asked why there wasn't a new guide to etiquette, but without the needless information about receiving lines and which fork to use at dinner and which color combos work for husbands and wives. I wanted to make a zine on etiquette for people who believe that etiquette is a thing of the past. An etiquette book that is irrespective of questions of gender and sexuality, that isn't heterocentric in any way. An etiquette book for the rest of us. I’ve always been interested in etiquette as part of a person’s overall moral education--the things you should know to be essentially prepared for life. The best book I ever read on etiquette is a children’s book called Manners To Grow On by Tina Lee; it’s literally one of the best books I’ve ever read on the subject. INTERVIEWER From Part Two of Etiquette, "The Social Graces," you say, "Whatever we want, we get; when we don't get what we want, we complain; and as soon as we get whatever it is that we want we devour, and then ask for more." What do you think this impulsiveness or desperate consumption does to relationships? To art? To self-care? GALVÁN It means we’re never satisfied with anything we have. We’re always looking for bigger and better. This lack of satisfaction with anything and everything has destroyed the world, our relationships, and even our bodies. My ex-boyfriend is a bodybuilder and he constantly strives to look and feel more perfect, even though he looks ripped to shit and is (for most white gay men) the pinnacle of masculine beauty. The bottom line is, you can't be perfect. Relationships aren't perfect, art isn't perfect, certainly artists like you and me aren't perfect. Stop striving for things you can't have. You're fine exactly where you are. Stop ruining the earth and each other to realize these fantasies that are based on what the Patriarchy wants. It’s literally killing us all. INTERVIEWER We need a less perfect art? GALVÁN I would like a kind of art that is more honest, more direct, more penetrating. In the 1970s in Italy they had a sort of experiment with this type of thinking, arte povera. Obviously, post-postmodern, obviously a postcolonial art. I'm not saying it can't be aesthetically pleasing. Art should be beautiful and be challenging at the same time. The best artisans are the ones whose works are full of tiny flaws. If you don't believe me, look at the Sistine Chapel. The entire fresco has cracks running all throughout it. INTERVIEWER What is a postcolonial art? GALVÁN Postcolonial art is art liberated from white Western cultural expectations. Art that values memory, time, liberation, a desire for unity and empowerment of oppressed peoples. Postcolonial art takes the cataclysm of slavery and genocide, and turns it into the most empowering thing the world has ever seen. A rich art full of ironies, color, narrative, longing, romance, and a very deep sense of sadness. A tropical sadness, like Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote about. INTERVIEWER What work would you consider postcolonial? GALVÁN Jean Rhys’ great novel Wide Sargasso Sea, which takes inspiration from Jane Eyre. Also Roberto Bolaño. 2666, the great baroque book of our time. Carlos Saura’s films on tango, flamenco and fado music. Kehinde Wiley’s beautiful paintings. Sister Corita Kent. Umberto Eco, while being the great advancer of hermeneutics and critical theory, has some lovely thoughts on the postcolonial. A great American postcolonial novel: The Color Purple. Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa. About Gloria Anzaldúa, who grew up in Hargill, Texas, which is about an hour from where I grew up: she went to South Padre Island and she was washed out to sea by the tide, where she almost drowned, and she said she ‘died a little’. She bears this trauma as a Latina lesbian in ways that are marvellous and just absolutely heartbreaking. I like that her work recognizes the volatility and danger of the sea, which is a very real thing in South Texas. Vertamae Grosvenor’s work on food, a sterling accompaniment to any anthropological study of food and colonial thinking. Of course, Toni Morrison. I especially love Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, clove and cinnamon. It is a postcolonial critique of masculinity, capitalism, and colonial politics, masquerading as a romance novel about a Syrian-born Brazilian and the great love of his life, a mixed-race itinerant woman from the sertão (the outback of NE Brazil) who cooks for him. It was such a huge success in Brazil they made a telenovela out of it, which became a movie. Now this is considered one of the best books ever to come out of South America. Postcolonialism is feminist. It affirms the worth and beauty, and the dignity, of women and their struggle against the colonial oppressor. INTERVIEWER What about in your own work? GALVÁN My own work is deeply postcolonial. Mine is linked to memory, to time. Especially saudade, the feeling of deep longing and nostalgia that is very strong in Portuguese-speaking culture. Not necessarily a sad thing, just a very deep longing. A lot of people mistake this longing for me being depressed or sad, when it’s part of who I am. The great lesson that we can learn from postcolonial writers--that the 'straight story' that we learn from English (Anglo-American literature) writers is rarely straight, and is rarely a story. I am living as an exile, more or less, in Oregon. I have never fit in with anything or anyone, and I don’t plan to any time soon. My family loves me very much but I can't find or keep a job in deep South Texas. It's possible to but you will be poor and in pain for much of your life. I grew up extremely poor. Part of being postcolonial is recognizing the violence and anomie of poverty and saying 'no' to it. It’s recognizing that it’s part of an asymmetrical battle waged by racists against women and children, especially. We have to fight back. Why? To fight racism, to want something better for yourself, to care for yourself so that your culture and your people keep on going. Also, recognizing that you will always be different, welcome here but not there, always living as a shadow of what you are expected to conform to culturally. INTERVIEWER How do you fight violence and anomie with art? Doesn't that get lonely? How do you keep yourself going? GALVÁN Any type of art -- any kind, really -- is confrontational. It challenges your assumptions about yourself and sometimes it defeats them entirely. To deal with the violence in our lives -- and there is much -- we must make art that disarms it and defeats it entirely, that completely washes over us and drowns our sadness and hatred and anger and our cynicism, but also our boredom and our loneliness. I can’t tell you how to make this kind of art. You just have to do it, and pray to God that you don’t end up killing yourself or other people in the process. My life is extremely lonely. It is extremely depressing to live in my body, with my experiences, with all hell breaking loose around us.. It is tiresome to be surrounded by people who don’t understand you and maybe don’t want to. But you have to say to yourself, 'I must go out and be the thing that I want to be in spite of what these people say, and make art that will challenge people's assumptions on what they know about me. You have to love yourself, forgive your mistakes, and enjoy life while you have it. Yes, my life is very lonely. I work out, I pray, I cry, I kiss beautiful men, I make art, I hang out with amazing friends, I write, I go to work, I sing in the shower. I don't compromise with failure, darling. And neither should you! INTERVIEWER You spoke with many on etiquette as you wrote each volume, you even consulted the American Institute for Manners and Civility. What consistently are people looking for in etiquette? And what is new etiquette? GALVÁN I think people are looking for an easier way of ‘doing’ etiquette. I think a lot of people have this rather irrational sense of trepidation because they're not doing etiquette right. There is a *right* way of doing etiquette in formal circles, but I'm not concerned with that. Etiquette is more than being just nice. It's about really caring about yourself and other people. That's what I think people get wrong about etiquette. These little acts (like writing a letter, &c) are acts of love. Taking the time to slow down and focus shows other people you care about them. I think people are intimidated with doilies and finger bowls and calling cards (I'm not). Most people really never have to really deal with them, thankfully, nowadays. The new etiquette is all about respecting people for who they are, and radically accepting them. That is all: radical acceptance and mindfulness. INTERVIEWER There is a tremendous love in your saints prints. What do you think about while you make them? Why are these people saints? GALVÁN I love the women in each of those prints in very different ways for very different reasons. I got the idea from talking with Katherine Spinella, when we were discussing poster ideas for the Women's March last year. I kept on thinking of the story of Judith and Holofernes from the Apocrypha. The story is most likely a folk tale from post-Exilic Judaism, where a pious widow named Judith seduces her husband's murderer, Holofernes, and beheads him. The most famous treatment of her story is in a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi. Caravaggio also did a magnificent rendering of it, as well. When I draw those prints, I am usually concerned with the specific details of their brilliance, and the beauty of the natural world. I often think of Baroque star maps, plants, flowers, Latin mottos, banners, angels' wings, old engravings. I like to draw tiny details that pop out. Like squiggles, little blobs, spaghetti-like forms. I want these to be surreal and have a sort of elevated feel to them. I like that particular people that we all know have saintly character to them. I like that Joan Didion has a saintlike quality, in that like most desert mothers, she is stoic and doesn't say much, but she has immense depth and has suffered greatly. I identify with women who suffer through their art, like Amália Rodrigues did. She was a depressive, but she loved her music. Her sadness shows in her eyes a lot, especially. She suffered for her country and what it went through under the Salazar dictatorship. Sister Corita suffered like a martyr but made beautiful art in the progress. She had to give up her vows because of a highly reactive Church relationship that objected to the feminist and socially conscious community she participated in. And Kim Kardashian, despite the media hype, has also had to suffer tremendously. Alot of artists love her because of the way she cries. I genuinely think she's a sweet lady. INTERVIEWER What is Catholicism to you? How does it inform your writing, your everyday practice? GALVÁN My Catholicism is deep and traditional, but not politically conservative. Some people may find a lot of guilt in the work of Catholic writers (like Flannery O’Connor) where I find myself continuously fascinated by the continuous attempts of people, however comic or not, to achieve that which we call ‘redemption’--which may never come at all, I might add. Above all I am fascinated with the magic of Catholicism--that you can light a candle and say a prayer to a saint and poof!--maybe you might get that man you’ve been thinking about to say hello to you... The best Baroque novels were Catholic in character: affirming the humanity and dignity of a human being who is full of frailties. Don Quijote, for example. Another beautiful novel from that time period is Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi, the quintessential Italian novel. The themes in them we consider pretty tame, but they were revolutionary for their time period. Here were people that readers could identify with--real people with very human flaws--instead of mythological or religious figures to idolize or emulate. Other good Catholic writers--for one, Graham Greene. Another, Franz Werfel. One of the greatest novels ever written is a Catholic novel: Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh. I like that every day in the Church has a character to it, some special saint's day or some other festivity to look forward to. Observing saints' days adds color to the year and helps you look forward to the future. Plus it's a great way to remember someone's birthday. INTERVIEWER Why are saints important to you? GALVÁN The Saints are my friends--they're your friends, too! Many of them were real people who had the same moral failings as we do. Many of them were wonderful human beings, real characters. You want to read something funny? Read the life of St Philip Neri, and you will learn how much of a practical joker he was (he once got into some minor trouble for pinning a foxtail on the back of an important Counter-Reformational cardinal). I find a lot of my strength in emulating their selflessness and compassion. We have to find our own saints, whether they be drag queens or artists, actors or social leaders--we have to find someone we can emulate and enshrine in our own lives. That means actually emulating them, rather than just posting their quotes on Facebook. INTERVIEWER You run a popup restaurant--what's it all about? Are you doing anything with the popup before Lent? GALVÁN Me and my chef friend run a pop out of his house in Laurelhurst. It's called The Rectory. We met through a mutual friend who had heard me talk about traditional Catholic feasts. So he said, 'it'd be so nice to have a traditional dinner for St John the Baptist's birthday (June 24)'--this holiday is traditionally a cheese holiday. So the next big Catholic feast day, for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (August 15), me and my friend served a traditional Assumption Day dinner (in the French style, of course, since that holiday is very much celebrated in France). On that day you serve fish, chicken, and very early wine (usually Beaujolais Nouveau). So we've had about five dinners now, for anywhere between 5-10 people, nothing real big. But each holiday has its own menu, and I sometimes design the menus in watercolor and ink. As far as Lent goes, we've got nothing planned -- Carnival is already upon us, and there's nothing really exciting about that except the opportunity to make pancakes and waffles (Catholic households were prohibited from eating butter, cheese or milk as much as possible during Lent in earlier times). I don't care too much for fish. But we will have an Annunciation Day dinner on March 25--that will be a lamb course, I think. Or we may not have one at all. It really depends on how we feel. INTERVIEWER Who is Selena to you? How has she been misrepresented or misinterpreted in the past? GALVÁN Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was probably the most important person ever to have emerged from South Texas in the last forty years. She really was such a terribly fascinating and terribly tragic figure. I think many people just naturally assumed her to be a sultry and sexy woman when in reality she was a somewhat innocent and very naïve girl who trusted the logic of her culture and her fans too carefully. She was such a wonderful person, though. I remember seeing her, and I remember the day she died vividly. I think people still bear the emotional trauma of her loss in a very acute and real way, even now. I still remember her features to this day and I still remember watching her video for "La Carcacha" for the first time when I was 5 years old. INTERVIEWER What does Portland need in its writing community? GALVÁN I think Portland needs to tone down the white angst in a lot of prose and poetry circles. I think a lot of people want to either write absolutely terrible horrible poetry based around their sexual paraphilias or their cat or both. I think many readers are looking to publish adult fiction as YA. I think we need to reappraise why this city seems to attract such mediocre writers. Please straight white men: stop writing about your girlfriends! I don't want to read about your trip to SF to buy weed, and your memories of putting your hand up a girl's skirt without her consent. Or yet another book about hiking. Or doing drugs. Or discovering yourself in another country. Please, we also need to stop telling people to write in the third person present tense--many stories use this voicing badly and it makes you sound like you're just a drunken fool telling someone a story you heard from someone else. I don't think we need anymore Hunter S. Thompsons or Cormac McCarthys. No more hyperboles and metaphors that evoke HP Lovecraft. People also need to stop publishing, or contemplate publishing, works derived from their half-baked obsessions with a particular fandom. If Fifty Shades of Grey taught us anything it is that editors are not the high-minded individuals we suppose them to be, and writers do not necessarily have to be talented to be popular. You should be reading Margaret Atwood, and not just The Handmaid’s Tale. Maybe we also don't need any Joan Didions, anymore either. Many young writers go through a Didion phase--I had mine. You know who I like? Roberto Bolaño, and António Lobo Antunes. José Saramago’s novels are good. Elena Poniatowska is Mexico’s answer to Joan Didion. Her The Night of Tlatelolco is considered the authoritative text on the 1968 massacre that took place there. Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet. Octavio Paz’s Sor Juana, or the Traps of Faith. Also, the best modern writer in Spanish, after Octavio Paz, is Fernando del Paso. Seriously, read News from the Empire: read it, and you will read a simultaneously tragic and hilarious account of the Second Mexican Intervention, an event that had dire consequences for all of the New World. Also an amazing postcolonial novel. INTERVIEWER If you could run a class or hold an event, what would it be? GALVÁN If I could run an event, I would love to start up a Proust reading circle at the IPRC. I would get a circle of big comfy chairs and we'd spend an evening reading Proust aloud, until we finished all seven novels that form his great masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. We'd have madeleines and tea and talk. Some people have Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, but I have Proust, and his beautiful, tragic epic. INTERVIEWER Is there a line from any book that inspires you or that you particularly love? GALVÁN I love all that Marcel ever wrote about life and love and being, but one quote I can think of sums up how I feel at the present moment, from the seventh and final volume of In Search of Lost Time, Time Regained: By art alone we are able to get outside ourselves, to know what another sees of this universe which for him is not ours, the landscapes of which would remain as unknown to us as those of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished. This labour of the artist to discover a means of apprehending beneath matter and experience, beneath words, something different from their appearance, is of an exactly contrary nature to the operation in which pride, passion, intelligence and habit are constantly engaged within us when we spend our lives without self-communion, accumulating as though to hide our true impressions, the terminology for practical ends which we falsely call life.

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Deadline: Valentine's Day

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Please submit to 1001 Journal!

1001 is the Independent Publishing Resource Center's print journal, online interview series and live reading series. We're very proud of our journal and we'd love to read, look at (gaze into!) your work. We publish prose, poetry, comics and image + text.

Just email 1001editors@iprc.org to submit.

Submissions close February 15th! (the day after Valentines Day!)

BASIC GUIDELINES:

-- Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Please inform editors immediately (via email) if your submission has been accepted elsewhere.

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Please submit 3-5 to poems in one attached .doc or .pdf file to 1001editors@iprc.org. Include your name and "POETRY SUBMISSION" in the subject line. You may use the body of the email to include a cover letter if you wish.

PROSE SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES:

Word length should be between 15 and 2000 words. Do not submit genre fiction, excerpts from longer works, book reviews, or interviews. Please send only one submission, unless your work is under 400 words, in which case feel free to send up to 3 pieces in a single file attachment in .doc format. All submissions should be double-spaced and should include a brief cover letter. Send all submissions to 1001editors@iprc.org. Include your name and "PROSE SUBMISSION" in the subject line.

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Please send 1-6 pages formatted to fit 8.5 x 5.5" (color or black and white) in .png or .pdf format to 1001editors@iprc.org. Include your name and "COMICS SUBMISSION" in the subject line. You may use the body of the email to include a cover letter if you wish.

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Please send 1-6 pages formatted to fit 8.5 x 5.5" (color or black and white) in .png or .pdf format to 1001editors@iprc.org. Include your name and "IMAGE AND TEXT" in the subject line. You may use the body of the email to include a cover letter if you wish.

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Submission deadline: March 15

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submit to 1001 Journal

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Jenny Forrester of Unchaste Readers on Public Readings, 1001 Interviews No. 16

Jenny Forrester has been published in a number of print and online publications including Seattle’s City Arts Magazine, Gobshite Quarterly, Nailed Magazine, Hip Mama, The Literary Kitchen, Indiana Review, and Columbia Journal. Her work is included in the Listen to Your Mother anthology, published by Putnam. She curates the Unchaste Readers Series. Her debut memoir Narrow River, Wide Sky is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in May, 2017.

Hawthorne Books: http://hawthornebooks.com/catalogue

Unchaste Readers Series: http://unchastereaders.com/

Blog: http://www.jennyforrester.com/

Jenny was interviewed by Sarah Gibbon. Sarah is a Portland-based writer. She is currently enrolled in the Creative Writing and Publishing Certificate Program at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

I know you are passionate about public readings, and I'd love to get your thoughts on how live readings can complement print publication and how they can be fulfilling in their own right. Why do you think it’s important to read stories in public and listen to live readings?

I appreciate your point about how live reading can complement print publication for writers and the opportunity to speak to ways to open up possibilities for people to get their voices heard.

Public readings are important for new [writers] and for some of us in our process of developing our voices, and it’s important to share our experiences of living and with the artistic process of writing. I don’t think it has to happen for every artist, but it can be crucial for some of us who haven't had the experience of sharing our writing with others or having our writing valued in this way. Some of us grew up without any value placed on creative writing or writing that "doesn't pay" or lead to employment.

And.

I know a writer who says readings are a break in the contract between writer and reader – that reading is a private thing and shouldn’t be intruded upon by the writer once they’ve put the work into the world.  

How is the dynamic between writer and reader different than between storyteller and live audience?

We’re listening for our own voice, adding our story to the human experience. We’re developing our craft when we see ourselves in front of the audience, when we see their reaction to us. It’s beneficial/a two-way street if it’s done right. We both get something out of it that’s beneficial to our growth. Hopefully.

Readings can turn into social scenes. An artist can become a scenester which can diminish their unique voice because audiences like to be entertained which isn’t always the main point of art and takes a layer of work on top of the message the artist is conveying. An artist can be motivated to take up artistic endeavors that don’t serve them – like trying to be shocking or funny or trying to align their story with particular narratives which ultimately doesn’t serve the audience either. Nobody grows. And not that art has to always serve the goal of growth, but that’s why I’m in this.

What is your advice for writers who haven’t read in public because they are nervous or don’t know how to get involved?

Read aloud multiple times, make notes on paper if you’re reading from paper. If you’re storytelling, breathe. If you’re nervous, you’re doing it right. You’re where you’re supposed to be – sharing something of yourself that is needed. That’s energy and something that needs doing. There are many readings – some ongoing series, some one-time shindigs, and there’s always the option of doing your own. The more vibrant and varied the opportunities, the better it is for everyone. We’re pushing ourselves and each other which can only serve art.

And don't listen to advice, keep your own counsel and listen to what needs to be heard.

The first time I met you, you talked about your passion for collecting other people’s stories. How do you keep your balance between taking in other people’s stories and putting out your own?

I love this question. It’s a real thing. I know my art form, my voice, my story – know thyself and all. That’s important. When I’m writing, I don’t read other people’s prose. I read poetry, though. A lot of poetry all the time. There’s something about getting inspiration and craft mastery from other forms, whether it’s word art forms like slam poetry or the written word or visual art. I have to focus on my own art form and can’t pay too much attention to other people working in my own art form. There’s something about poetry, of course, that is important and massive. Poets know it, too. We need poets the most.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m getting my book launched for May, 2017, and I’m so grateful to Hawthorne Books for setting the May 5th book launch at the downtown Powell’s and helping me organize the book tour. I’m working on getting an Unchaste Anthology published and working on some reading events with other organizers to keep things vibrant and inspiring and expansive and challenging.

What are you reading right now?

Everything. Rebecca Solnit and Rene Denfeld and Matthew Robinson and Alexis Smith and Martha Grover. Claudia Rankine and Natalie Diaz and Emily Kendal Frey and Ocean Vuong. Blues Triumphant by Jonterri Gadson. The Watermark by Alice Anderson. Sherman Alexie. Sandra Cisneros. Margaret Atwood. And always Mary Daly and bell hooks. Always Sappho and William Blake. John Muir. Rumi.

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Shayla Lawson, 1001 Interviews No. 15

Shayla Lawson (shaylalawson.com) is the author of the chapbook PANTONE (Miel Books, 2016) and the forthcoming I Think I'm Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia Books, 2018). She has written for Salon, ESPN, Guernica, and The Offing. Tyler Sowa interviewed Shayla. Tyler Sowa is an Oregon native. He is a writer concerned with varying aspects of the house, home, and the domestic. He is currently at work on a chapbook titled The Anti-Depressant Waiting Room Rules.

TYLER What do you feel like people can take away from ‘Pantone’ other than your personal experience with how you perceive color?

SHAYLA

I think PANTONE is less about how I perceive color and more about vignettes inspired by the idea of what colors would say if they could speak to me.  Of course, certain colors speak to my personal experience, but a lot of the prose poems are based on the ways I’ve observed colors manifest themselves as a central character in a variety of stories.

TYLER

Do you find yourself curious on how others see the world?

SHAYLA

I’m curious about how others “see” the world in a physical or phenomenological standpoint, and generally curious about “the world.”

TYLER

Your poetry moves swiftly through form and medium and lands in many places. With Pantone, you’ve coupled poetry with both scent and color. How does your writing typically evolve to reach so far from the page?

SHAYLA

I thought of writing each poem in PANTONE as a way of curating a room for each color.  Part of that process involves evoking scent and sound as part of the experience.

TYLER

Can you recall your first introduction with poetry? Which poets inspired and lifted you into writing poetry of your own?

SHAYLA

My parents kept a lot of poetry in the house.   I remember reciting poems as early as four.  The first poem that probably solidified my future as a writer was probably from high school, “Cotton Candy on Rainy Day” by Nikki Giovanni.  I still recite portions of “The Love Song of J.  Alfred Prufock” by T.S.  Eliot, especially in the shower.

TYLER

As a relevant follow-up, how has Frank Ocean inspired you as an artist? Much of your own work conflates music and poetry, in your opinion, do you think music helps to extend poetry’s reach?

SHAYLA

I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean is a collection I’ve been working on coming out in 2018.  Like PANTONE, I tend to work on poetry collections that are projects.  I’ll ask myself a question (e.g.  What would it be like if colors could speak to you?) and use poetry to answer it.   

I’ll use any vehicle I need to tell a story.   I think I’m less interested in conflating poetry and music (or poetry and color) than I am in making sure I stay authentic to the source material I set out to explore.   Frank Ocean is a musician, so I sing the songs that inspired my poems when I perform them.  PANTONE® is a company that reimagined how we responded to color; the chapbook mirrors the experience of searching for a color using the Pantone system by being distributed as a set of cards as opposed to a bound book.

TYLER

Your poem “Float Like a Butterfly” on ESPNW is incredible! I never thought I would see poetry intersect with the sports page, yet after reading this piece it seems so fitting. Who do you find is your ideal audience?

SHAYLA

Thank you.  My ideal is to do my best to chronicle the world in a way that is respectful and thoughtful.   Whomever that appeals to, I’m happy to reach.

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Sara Ryan, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 6

Sara Ryan is the author of the graphic novel Bad Houses, published by Dark Horse Comics with art by Carla Speed McNeil, young adult novels The Rules for Hearts and Empress of the World, both published by Viking, and various comics, short stories and essays, most recently "Openly Bisexual" in The V-Word, edited by Amber J. Keyser and published by Simon Pulse/Beyond Words, and "V.I.P." in Sensation Comics: Featuring Wonder Woman, published by DC Entertainment.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?

Remember a first draft is just that. Don't get stuck trying to make every sentence perfect. Don't be afraid to write out of order. If there's a scene you're excited about that's near the end, write that scene. Writing it may also give you more ideas about what should happen in earlier scenes.

Don't show your writing to other people right away. Part of what you're doing is working out your narrative voice, and if you share scenes with readers early on, you may find yourself trying to write the book

they

think you should write, instead of the one

you

want to write.  

What did you learn after finishing your first novel?

As my editor told me, "It will take as long as it takes." (And that's usually longer than you think.)

Do you have a different process for different forms of writing?

If I'm writing a comics script, of course I'm thinking very visually, and I'm responsible for providing information about what each panel should look like to my artist. I'll often be looking for image reference at the same time that I'm working out plot structure, captions and dialogue.

When I'm writing prose, I'm typically most concerned with how my point of view character is moving through the story -- where they are, who and what else is in the scene, what sensory experiences they're having -- and distilling all that through the character's voice, keeping in mind that my POV character is sometimes going to be wrong about what they're observing or concluding.

That said, my process on a logistical level is pretty similar whatever I'm writing: I'm in my house or at a coffeeshop, either alone or on a writing date with friends who are working on their own projects. Ideally, I'm on my laptop but have the Internet turned off, or I'm writing longhand.

Do you write every day?

Not currently. I've had stretches where I've written every day, and it's great to aim for. But I think it's also important to maintain other aspects of your life -- sustaining relationships, meeting obligations, doing activism, getting exercise -- anything you value. Most writers also need to work other jobs to make a living. Even most of the "full-time writers" I know have other jobs -- teaching, editing, speaking, etc. So maybe you carve out time on the weekend, or devote one evening a week, or two early mornings alternating with days when you go to the gym. Have a writing schedule, because that makes it easier to make writing a habit -- but make it a schedule that works for you. 

Find Sara Ryan’s Bad Houses and her other books at http://sararyan.com/

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Connor Miller, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 5

Connor Miller is a writer & personality currently living in Portland, Oregon. He has written novels, poetry, and web articles, and also does freelance work as a social media director for artists. He spends most of his time reading and writing in cafes around town. You can find his work at connorthemiller.com or @connorthemiller on Twitter.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?

Finish it. Honestly, the hardest part about writing a novel is getting that first draft out. I live for deadlines. Set your daily goals, your monthly goals, and FINISH THE DAMN THING.

What did you learn after finishing your first novel?

After writing my first novel, I learned that the important thing is to make a mess, then make a better mess. Writing a bad novel will help you write a better one the second time around. It’s all about trial, error, and learning.

What did you learn through editing?

Editing is therapeutic and maddening. When editing, I learned that novel-writing is a heroic endeavor that will take a bit of your soul with it. I encourage sou replenishing activities, like hanging out with dogs or getting beers with friends.

How much of an idea do you have before you begin writing?

Sometimes it’s just a feeling I have in my heart. I’m spiritual in the sense that I try to follow my instincts and intuition when it comes to writing. When writing, it feels more like following than leading.

Do you advance your novel while you’re out working or walking around?

Yes. Always. Life is research for your novel. On the bus, I’ll imagine my characters and play with them, hang out with them. I’ll window shop and go to new places because I need to fill my characters with experiences and ideas I’ve never encountered before.

What form do you write in most? Do you write novels most?

Mostly I write novels. I used to write more poetry but I like how novels make me slow down and think in long-term ways. Like, with a novel you think “This will take me about a year” which is wild, especially when my general timescape looks more like “What will feed me in the next three days?”

What’s your writing process?

I sit and stew for a while. I fill the creative bank with angst, new experiences, meaningful time spent with friends and my environment. When I feel like I have filled myself with art, I can then churn it out on paper. It’s like fueling a train or keeping your house warm. You gotta burn something in order to keep going.

In more practical terms, I write 600-1,000 words in one location, then I move to a different cafe to write another 600-1,000 words, and I do this for as long as I can. It seems like it’s hard for me to write more than 1,000 words in one sitting. Walk breaks are good.

Do you have a different process for different forms of writing?

Yes. For poems, you gotta hunt them. Writing poetry is like waiting in the woods. You gotta be in the right place and have the right conditions to catch what you’re gonna catch. Novel writing is like building a bridge. There will be no bridge if you don’t show up to build it. You don’t hide in bushes and wait for someone to build the bridge.

What guides you in your writing? How do you pick what to follow and what to leave behind?

If I get bored while writing, something’s wrong.

Do you write every day?

Almost. Inevitably, things happen. In an ideal world, yes I am writing every day.

How many words do you write in a day and why?

When it’s not NaNoWriMo, writing at least 600 words feels good. It’s manageable. It’s a chunk.

You can find Connor Miller’s Thomas and Serious 

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C.M. Spivey, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 4

Cait Spivey is a speculative fiction writer, author of high fantasy From Under the Mountain and the horror novella series, “The Web.” Her enduring love of fantasy started young, thanks to authors like Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Diane Duane, Tamora Pierce, and many more. Now, she explores the rules and ramifications of magic in her own works—and as a panromantic asexual, she’s committed to queering her favorite genres.

In addition to working on these and many other projects, she is a developmental editor for REUTS Publications and a freelancer with Bear and Black Dog Editing, LLC. She has interned with both the Bent Agency and Corvisiero Literary Agency, and was lead editor for more than a dozen novels with Curiosity Quills Press.

She has a B.A. in English Literary Studies (and yes, she’s heard that Avenue Q song). She worked on her college’s literary magazine, The York Review, for two years, first as Prose Editor and then as Managing Editor. She was also a contributor. She has had two plays performed in the college’s annual Student One-Acts.

In her spare time, she plans her next tattoo (there will always be a next tattoo) and falls further behind on her to-be-read list. Anything left over is devoted to her tireless quest to make America read more. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her darling husband Matt and adorable dog Jay.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?

Learn the basics. Learn about the Hero’s Journey, learn about a three-act structure, about the plot mountain. Even if you choose not to outline (which I would also recommend you try at least once), understanding typical novel structures will help you keep the shape of your story in mind as you write, which will make editing a helluva lot easier. 

Later, you can deviate from and subvert these narrative norms, but when you’re starting out, they can be helpful guides.

What did you learn after finishing your first novel?--what did you learn through writing the first draft?--what did you learn through editing?

What I learned through a decade of writing and revising the first draft of my novel was that big stories are made out of small parts. My early problems with the first draft came from having too many parts, too many characters and plot line to manage. The other problem early on was that I gave each of those parts equal importance, which is antithetical to the novel’s inherent task of highlighting a particular story. In drafting and editing this debut novel, I learned to narrow my focus and linger on the story and emotions I was actually trying to convey.

How much of an idea do you have before you begin writing? 

It varies. Usually I get an idea for a character with a particular trait; I write that down and build from there. With From Under the Mountain, I was in biology class and thought the DNA proteins sounded like fantasy names, so a setting was born. The first “Web” novella, I See the Web, was inspired by an actual experience I had with a spider.

Do you advance your novel while you’re out working or walking around? --do you advance its plot or its characters? 

I’m not sure what you mean by “advance”—but when I’m in a drafting phase, I do think about the story all the time, especially if there’s a narrative or editorial problem I’m trying to solve. 

What form do you write in most? Do you write novels most?

Yeah, I’m a novelist pretty exclusively. I’m notoriously bad at writing short things, both in terms of keeping the word count down and making the narrative focused and small enough to fit.

What’s your writing process?

I sit and I write at least four days a week. I try to get at least 2000 words in each session, usually more. I always start a session by reading over what I wrote the previous day, and I follow a fluid outline that I adjust as necessary. And this is the really important part: I get a cookie for every thousand words I write. 

What guides you in your writing? How do you pick what to follow and what to leave aside?

I write using an outline, and when I’m drafting the outline, it’s very logical. It’s about making sure the action progresses in a way that makes sense. Once I start drafting, as I get to know the characters better, the emotional journeys they take tend to be the stronger force, and that usually means the action changes a little bit. Unless the emotion is there, the plot won’t feel authentic; that’s how I decide what to keep or change or discard.

Do you ever feel tricked or led astray by an idea or a character? 

No, not at all. For one thing, I don’t tend to treat my characters like they’re separate from myself—I’m not of the “oh, my characters do what they like” school. I tend to dislike anything that diminishes the author’s role as the ultimate decision-maker in a book’s production, barring a few exceptions, for reasons I’d be happy to go into at another time.

Do you start knowing the end? Do you keep your beginning?

Yes, and sometimes. Usually, though, it’s the middle that needs the most revising.

What nourishes you throughout the process? Is the process a thrill or is it painstaking?

Drafting sometimes is a pain. The magic for me is in revising, because that’s where the frame of the story is in place and you can really start sculpting the final form. Themes emerge, characters shine or dim, the plot either falls together or apart—whatever happens when you go back shows you the way forward. So I power through the drafting, and I edit as I go, because I know that’s how I get to the part I love most.

You can find C.M. Spivey’s books on her website. 

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Kendare Blake, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 3

Kendare Blake is the New York Times bestselling, critically-acclaimed author of the YA fantasy novel Three Dark Crowns. Her other novels include Anna Dressed in Blood (NPR Top 5, Kirkus Top 10), the Goddess War series and more. Kendare is a graduate of Ithaca College and received her masters from Middlesex University in London. She currently lives and writes in Washington with her husband and their many pets. You can connect with her at http://kendareblake.com/.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?  

Enjoy it. Love it. Writing your first novel should not feel like work, or an assignment. Focus on the passion. That is not to say it will not be challenging, or have its moments of frustration. But if you find yourself hating writing before you even finish your first one, it may not be the right one. First drafts are for the honeymoon phase. 

What did you learn after finishing your first novel? What did you learn through writing the first draft? What did you learn through editing? 

I'm going to answer this in reference to my first PUBLISHED novel, rather than that glorious first, first novel I wrote in a spiral notebook in seventh grade. So, after finishing the first draft of Sleepwalk Society, I realized that first drafts are sometimes mere writing exercises. Exercises in plot, and characterization. Getting to know the world and how the people move in it. Finding the actual story you want to tell. 

The first draft of Sleepwalk Society was 103,000 words. The second was 53,000. Nothing except the characters and some basic plot remained from one to the next. But I knew where it started, and how it ended, and with a year of rest in between drafts, I knew how I wanted to tell it. 

How much of an idea do you have before you begin writing? 

I like an idea to be rolling around upstairs for as long as possible before I start. But...one of my most successful books, Anna Dressed in Blood, defied that and demanded to be begun right away. Still, I always want about three chapters worth of stuff happening in my head before I try to set it down on the page. I want to know the major beats. I want to know as much as I can about the characters. 

Do you advance your novel while you’re out working or walking around? Do you advance its plot or its characters? 

Solutions to things come at the strangest times. When I'm zoned out. When I'm on the treadmill. And once I'm actually writing, plot and character meld together. One doesn't move without the other. 

What form do you write in most? Do you write novels most? 

It depends on the year. I write about two short stories a year, maybe three, and I only do one novel a year, so I guess mostly short stories. But of course novels are 80-100k, and my short stories rarely go much over 5k, so... I do love them both. I want to see more single-author collections of short stories. I hear people say those don't sell well, but I don't know why they don't. Reading a single-author collection is an incredible experience. 

What’s your writing process? 

I don't really have a process. I think about an idea, about a story. Start seeing it in my head as a movie, start hearing the characters puzzle things out...then I start writing. Then I rest the draft for a few months, and write it again if it needs it. 

Do you have a different process for different forms of writing?  

The process for short stories is just...shorter. I won't spend more than a day or two actually writing a short story. But I think about them for just as long as I'll think about my novels, just less frequently. 

What guides you in your writing? How do you pick what to follow and what to leave behind? 

I do what the story wants to do. It is in the driver's seat. No matter how much "plot" exists in my novels, none of them feel constructed to me as I'm writing them. I don't sit back with a diagram and a pen and say, "and now...this!" When the writing is going well, it's much more like channeling. 

Do you write every day? 

Not unless I'm on a deadline. Which lately, has been in the winter and late summer. So in the winter, I'll write most every day. Early summer I'm off. And then there's been a short break in the fall this year.  

How many words do you write in a day and why? 

When I'm on deadline, I don't let myself walk away with less than a thousand words, and I'm happiest when it's about three thousand. But the only reason for that is the deadline. When I'm not on deadline, I write what I want, when I want. That hasn't been for a long time though. So maybe I can't even do it anymore.

Kendare Blake’s Three Dark Crowns came out September, 2016.

Publisher Comments:

Fans of acclaimed author Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood will devour her latest novel, a dark and inventive fantasy about three sisters who must fight to the death to become queen. In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born: three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions. But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose...it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins. The last queen standing gets the crown.

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Luke Fraser, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 2

Luke Fraser is the author of two novels, a graduate from English Honors at UBC, and a current bookseller at Powell's Books. You can find pieces by him online on The Garden Statuary, and you can find him on twitter @lukerfraser. He lives in Portland, OR.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?

For those about to embark on their first novel, I say write blind and without second guesses. I will quote the King from Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Wonderland, who tells Alice at one point, near the end, ‘Begin at the beginning… and go on until you come to the end: then stop.’

That is, start from wherever the story truly begins. We might be tempted to start where the action picks up, but is that where the anchor of the first few pages should rest? In my process, I also write chronologically as a solemn rule. It may seem productive to map out and follow the plot points for an entire novel, jumping between them from day to day, but I believe that too much planning harms more than it helps; it leaves little room for true, creative freedom.

Neither do I look back at what I’ve written, unless it’s for reference. I write until I hit my word count and then I close my manuscript until the next day. To new novelists, I say write without any attachment to what you’re putting down. Write terrible chapters that you know are terrible in the moment. You can always change or delete them on the second draft.

Last but not least, another quote. I can’t remember who said it, or even how I came by it, but I think it’s providential, ‘Write your first novel and then bury it.’

What did you learn after finishing your first novel? What did you learn through writing the first draft? What did you learn through editing?

After my first novel, I learned that it’s not that difficult to write something that resembles a novel. Anyone with enough patience and dedication can put eighty thousand words in a document. The hardest part is sitting down to do it every day.

I learned that there is no singular way of writing a novel: everyone has their own process; the trick is to use the first novel as a way of learning how to write a novel in the first place. It can help you set good habits for the future.

When it came time to editing, I learned that time away from the manuscript and printing it out were the best ways of getting some objective distance from the project. Later, I learned that my own approach to editing was too coddling. I only ever went so far as to edit the electronic document. So when it came time to editing my second novel, I started over with a blank document, which was the best decision I could have made. It opened whole new possibilities for fresh scenes, characters, and story lines.

How much of an idea do you have before you begin writing?

I usually have a vague idea about how many parts there will be in a novel, and therefore how many story arcs there will be for the protagonist(s). I might have ideas about where I want my protagonists to end up, but I don’t try to work out those plot points until I get to them. As I said, I start from the beginning and go; I am diligent about keeping myself from assuming any kind of prescience. Instead, I try to let my characters work through their conflicts on their own. It usually takes me about the first hundred pages before I figure out who they are and what they want. In the past, I’ve almost always scrapped most of those pages for better material in the second draft.

Do you advance your novel while you’re out working or walking around? If so, do you advance its plot or its characters?

I try not to think about my novel when I’m away from my desk. Since I write as often as I do, I treat it like I would any other job; I keep a healthy distance from it when I’m not working. The best epiphanies always come when I’m not trying to work something out, but rather when they catch me by surprise and interrupt a completely different, unrelated thought.

Otherwise, I leave plot points up to the moment while I’m writing, but I’ll get to that in a few questions.

What form do you write in most? Do you write novels most?

As of now I do focus more on novels. There is something about the long form that is incredibly appealing to me. It leaves a lot of room for exploration and meditation on character.

I have been working on my second novel since October of 2015, with six months for each completed draft thus far. Before that, I spent about ten months working on my first novel. That’s left me little time for other pursuits, but I have been known to write poetry and short stories. I plan to produce more of the latter in the next year, as I hope to try my hand at submitting to journals.

What’s your writing process? How many words do you write in a day and why?

On any day while I’m working on a project, writing is the first thing I do after a solid breakfast and a cup of tea. (I’m learning to write at other times in the day, but I more often feel better when I’ve hit my quota first thing.) I’ll sit down, put on some instrumental classical music, and then write until I hit one thousand words. Sometimes I write less on truly terrible days, but more often than not I will write past that word count. One thousand is a comfortable suggestion. Per Stephen King in On Writing, I made my quota two thousand words per day during my first novel, but it was often a struggle. At one thousand I feel like I can put my all into that many words without forfeiting my voice for the sake of hitting a number. Where the ‘and oftentimes more’ comes in is the frequent case in which I’m on a roll and I want to write until the end of a scene.

Do you write every day?

If I’m working on something, I do write every day. I have to, or else. Then there are times when I allow myself to take breaks, like right now. I just finished draft two of my latest novel a couple weeks ago, and even if I’ll be working on shorter things here and there I might give myself another couple weeks before I return to it for draft three. Distance is a necessary balm for the creative mind.

Do you have a different process for different forms of writing?

I can’t say that I do, except that when I write shorter stuff I usually try to finish it in one sitting. Sometimes it’s impossible, but other times it’s so rewarding to write a whole story over the course of only a few hours.

What guides you in your writing?

I leave most of my forward momentum to blind instinct, trusting that my characters know more about their stories than I do. Even if most of my characters amount to little more than a few loosely bound data points, the brain has a funny way of perceiving them as fully formed individuals with real lives and personalities. My job is to interpret those personalities onto the page, acting as a translator for these fictional specters: what they see, hear, smell, taste, feel. Sense and sensory experiences are the easiest ways of centering someone in their world and finding a foothold for you, the writer.

How do you pick what to follow and what to leave aside?

Sometimes it can be hard to know what to keep and what to trash. Most often I have to ask myself, how does this passage add to my character’s growth and development, or how does it reveal something about them? If a particular passage does neither, then I get rid of it. I think one of the hardest parts of writing is putting something down that you know is worthless, but from my experience I’ve found it’s always easier to pivot from something as opposed to nothing. It’s far more constructive to know what you don’t want out of a story if you can point to it. Unfortunately, I feel my advice here is lacking. I rely on my gut more than anything else.

Do you ever feel tricked or led astray by an idea or a character?

While I can’t say any ideas or characters have tricked me, I have been surprised. The best moments in the writing process come when an individual character makes a split-second decision completely separate from my own autonomy or expectations. This happened recently at the end of my latest novel’s second draft. In the first draft, only my protagonists were fully fleshed out as characters. Then when it came time to rewrite the second draft, I made a point of fleshing out the supporting characters more. I thought I knew what the end was going to be as I approached the final chapter (after all, I’d already written it), but because I took the time to invest in my supporting characters, my last chapter changed completely when a few of these characters stepped in between me and where I thought the story was going to go. Out of that came an entirely new ending, which I’m now happier with.  

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Susan DeFreitas, 1001 NaNoWriMo Interviews, No. 1

An author, editor, and educator, Susan DeFreitas’s creative work has appeared in The Utne Reader, Story Magazine, Southwestern American Literature, and Weber—The Contemporary West, along with more than twenty other journals and anthologies. She is the author of the novel Hot Season (Harvard Square Editions, 2016) and a contributor at Litreactor.com. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she serves as a collaborative editor with Indigo Editing & Publications.

What is your advice for someone setting out writing their first novel?

Number one: Don't keep returning to the start of your manuscript and trying to "get it right" so you can go forward. You have to get your first draft down before you can even really see what it is you've got (unless you're Zadie Smith, who tinkers meticulously as she goes and still somehow manages to reach The End). I did this for many years with my "novel in the drawer," and I see that sort of compulsion now as something that kept me from actually tackling the real issues, which lay with the story itself.

Number two (and this is speaking as both a writer and an editor): Unless you're writing something highly experimental, you need both a plot arc and a character arc, so if you don't have a good handle on those two things, it's time to hit the books. (Don't get overwhelmed by all the other elements covered in discussions on craft, though.)

What did you learn after finishing your first novel?

I learned that perfection in a manuscript is like the speed of light--the closer you come to it, the harder it is to accelerate! I'm speaking largely about typos here, but also about the story--there will always be more you could do to improve the book. At some point you just have to settle for the best version of what you've got.

What did you learn through writing the first draft?

I learned, well, how to write literary fiction--short fiction in particular, as the chapters of Hot Season started off as short stories I worked on with my mentors and in my workshops in the course of my MFA.

What did you learn through editing?

I learned how to create a novel out of a collection of linked stories. It's not a niche with a whole lot of interest, in terms of creative writing instruction, but man, I am an expert in it! Ask me anything. =)

How much of an idea do you have before you begin writing?

My practice has evolved a lot since I was in school, so there are ways that I interrogate an idea now before I write that I didn't know how to early on. I've also gotten a lot clearer on who I actually am as a writer and what my central concerns are. Here on the three main questions I ask myself before I begin a story:

1)  What kind of story is this?

(What is the form?) Is it a ghost story, a confession, a death by misadventure? A losing-a-parent-in-old-age story, a trying-to-find-your-new-apartment story, a first-day-at-a-new-school-or-job story? A tale of the uncanny? A picaresque? Whatever you're writing about, it has been approached before in fiction; knowing the form of the particular type of story you're working with--which may arise from literature or from the sort of stories we tell each other all the time--helps to give a story an intelligible shape, one that the reader will recognize. Also, knowing the form you're working in allows you to write against it, should you desire.

2) What's the aesthetic attraction?

I think of these sorts of things as "fetishes"--things that I, as both a reader and writer, just like to find in my fiction--who knows why! For instance, I like knowing the specific buildings my stories will be set in, the particular landscapes, as certain buildings and landscapes have a very particular resonance for me, as well as an internal web of associations I can draw upon in creating imaginative work. In Hot Season, the house the three roommate characters share is, to me, almost a character in an of itself, and the high country of Arizona is a place that, as an expat living in the Northwest, I enjoy returning to in my work.

3) What will be emphasized in the story?

What's the upshot? What are the themes and patterns that will convey what the story is all about? In creative writing instruction, I think we're quite wary of any talk of meaning in fiction--but to my mind, if the events of the story and the character's inner issues don't align in a meaningful way, it isn't a story, it's just a sequence of events. And though this approach is unusual for academic creative writing programs, I've found a lot of validation for it in the emerging body of brain science associated with reading fiction.

Do you advance your novel while you’re out working or walking around? Do you advance its plot or its characters?

[By "advance" I'm assuming you mean something like working on the novel in your head?]

Of course! When I'm working on a piece, I'm always working on it. Insights often arise in the course of a Saturday hike, conversations with friends, lying in bed at night--you name it.

What form do you write in most? Do you write novels most?

What’s your writing process?

I draft by hand in pencil. When I return to the work, I edit the previous page, using proofreader's marks for deletions and insertions and including alternate words, phrases, and sentences in the margins. When I type in the work, I take or leave from what's on the page as I see fit. From there, I revise as much as is necessary to create something that feels shapely and satisfying--if I'm lucky, that's maybe two or three revisions. If I'm not--well, significantly more.

I wrote Hot Season and the two books that follow it in the Greene River trilogy as three sets of linked stories that were themselves loosely linked to each other. It's a tricky thing to pull off, and I've since decided to turn each of those three sections into a novel of its own. Which is to say, the process with these books has been quite unique, and I'm not sure if I'll ever pursue this particular process again.

Right now, I'm working on short stories, which will eventually form a collection called Dream Studies. I'm enjoying the process of working with similar themes across these stories without necessarily having anything that overtly links them (in terms of character or plot). I'm enjoying the process, which seems a bit simpler than the kind of work I did with Hot Season--but creative work always seems simple in its early stages, doesn't it? =)

What guides you in your writing? How do you pick what to follow and what to leave aside?

I'm driven by the need to share what moves me--the love and the beauty, the travesty and heartbreak, the landscapes and people and places that are the riches of my lived and imaginative existence. I am driven by the desire to bear witness to what I have lived through and what I have seen--even when my work borders on the speculative, it is almost always based in my own life experiences. In many cases, I am driven by nostalgia, as well as the need to derive meaning from the past.

As for what to leave aside, that's up to the story. You can have grand ideas and strong compulsions as an artist that just don't work in the sort of thing you're trying to make. You have to learn when to let go of those things and let them find their way into the other work. Like Stephen King said, "The story is the boss."

Do you ever feel tricked or led astray by an idea or a character?

More often it's the other way around--I feel tricked by my own ideas for a story, because sometimes I dedicate a lot of time to them before I realize that they're not going to work. (See above.)

Do you start knowing the end? Do you keep your beginning?

The first beginning is almost always not the real beginning, because the real beginning of a story exists in conversation with the ending. As for the ending itself, sometimes I know what image or note I'm driving toward, but sometimes the ending doesn't become clear until a revision or two in--and in either case, it always requires some finessing upon revision.

Susan will be at Powell’s City of Books on Thursday, December 8 @ 7:30 PM to talk about her debut novel, Hot Season.

In the tinder-dry Southwest, three eco-minded roommates – students at Deep Canyon College, known for its radical politics – are looking for love, adventure, and the promise of a bigger life that led them west. But when the FBI comes to town in pursuit of an alum wanted for "politically motivated crimes of property," rumor has it that undercover agents are enrolled in classes, making the college dating scene just a bit more sketchy than usual. Katie, an incoming freshman, will discover a passion for activism that will put her future in jeopardy; Jenna, in her second semester, will find herself seduced by deception; and Rell, a senior, will discover her voice, her calling, and love where she least expects it. Hot Season (Harvard Square Editions) is the debut novel from Susan DeFreitas.

Preorder a signed edition of

Hot Season

[1001journal-blog]

Pomes, 1001 Interviews No. 14, Part 1

Pomes, yes, pomes, not ‘poems,’ is a poetry game club that meets every Saturday night at 11pm to write pomes and to read pomes at midnight under the sculpture that swings and looks like balls. 

Pomes, for the month of November, is running “Writing Practice: A Pomes Approach to NaNoWriMo,” typically meeting Saturday nights at 11pm at Quality Bar and some Wednesday evenings in various locations in Downtown Portland.

These interviews were conducted by passing notes:

J____ S______

SCISSORBIRDS DESCEND ON CAT'S CRADLE

INTERVIEWER

How will I die?

J____ S______

Staining the airwaves with one last exhale,

consciousness dissolving into ballrooms.

INTERVIEWER

Blue or Nothing at all?

J____ S______

Absolute Blue as a facet of Absolute White, all forms receding and decomposing into milky soups of pure potential that deconstruct all nothings, the gurgling void that contains every color in which we grow gills or get unmade all at once and forever.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have any persistent fearful image?

J____ S______

Yes.  Or perhaps one would call it a persistent fearful type of image.

INTERVIEWER

How does it appear?

J____ S______

When living things betray a trace of glitchy simulation:

The empty cartoon eyes of texture-mapped homunculi

Who seem always to be on the brink of pixellation.

INTERVIEWER

Does this image ever arise when you experience other commonplace moments of dread?

J____ S______

Shadow of gnosis

Knowing it's a hungry game

So big, so broken.

INTERVIEWER

Have you ever deliberately manifested a monster from dread itself to at least give yourself a "being" to face?

In cul-de-sac seasons when I run out of reason

And my moments flood with blood from outside time,

Chronopathic Carcinoma wants to put me in its coma,

But the fear of wasted minutes falls away when I begin it,

When I sublimate all fear and hate in fever-steam and thoughtcrime.

INTERVIEWER

Did you have a childhood toy? A favorite one? What was it?

M_____ C______

Yes, I had a stuffed Simba plush that I brought everywhere with me until the stuffing fell out.

INTERVIEWER

What color will the sky turn come Armageddon?

M_____ C______

Mauve.

INTERVIEWER

If you could build a city out of any material, what material?

M_____ C______

Legos.

INTERVIEWER

Are dogs little warlords?

M_____ C______

Yes, they destroy and mark and are terrible roommates.

INTERVIEWER

If a dead bird fell from a tree onto your lap, and you wrote it a two line pome, what is the pome?

M_____ C______

Pushed from the nest too early, poor bird. I can wholly relate to your struggle.

INTERVIEWER

If you stepped on a rat and killed it, it’s dying words were… (2 lines rhyming and concerning the future).

M_____ C______

Betrayal! From my whiskers to my tail!

You too shall know my pain and you too shall fail.

INTERVIEWER

Say you’re in a foggy pumpkin patch really, really early in the morning. You find a diamond ring on one of the pumpkins. Don’t try it on. You’re nervous. Maybe you’ll vomit, but don’t try it on. You have to walk up the invisible stairs to return it. She opens the shutters when you knock. What does she say?

M_____ C______

I thought you were Jerome.

What do you say?

M_____ C______

Is this his ring?

INTERVIEWER

What color is the fish at the bottom of the ocean?

M_____ C______

The fish at the very bottom is a most beautiful indescribable color, but no one can tell b/c it’s too dark.

INTERVIEWER

If it crawled out, it would speak words, wouldn’t it? But not in any intelligible order… (10 word sentence)

M_____ C______

Feet are fins, too. Walk the sky we must, because.

INTERVIEWER

CHARMANDER BULBASUAR SQUIRTLE

H_____ B________

CHARMANDER 

INTERVIEWER

Some degenerate Cubone spray painted some words on your childhood home. What does it say?

H_____ B________

For a good time call 867-5309

LOL JK

INTERVIEWER

Write two lines about Psyduck lost in a psychiatric hospital.

H_____ B________

With one hand on his pounding head, the other moves the door open.

“Welcome home, Psyduck,” the doctor said.

INTERVIEWER

Write a two line pome about Psyduck lost in the woods.

H_____ B________

A single tear rolls down Psycuck’s face.

“Why did she leave me here?” he thought.

INTERVIEWER

You come home (current home) and there’s some dude stuck in the wall. You can’t see him but you can see his arm waggling from the wall. Describe his childhood with a haiku (5-7-5)

H_____ B________

Oh god, what is that?

I’ve seen enough stranger things.

To know what it is.

INTERVIEWER

Imagine it’s been raining for fifteen minutes. You can’t find anywhere to escape it. There is a group of people around a tree, they’re all pressing their ears against it. You try it too. The tree tells you three rhyming lines. What are they?

H_____ B________

Can you hear me?

I’ve had to pee,

For 5 centuries.

INTERVIEWER

There’s a shivering Pokemon up in the branches of the tree, what Pokemon is it?

H_____ B________

A Pachirsu, duh.

INTERVIEWER

You had planned to meet up with your friends but you can’t seem to find them. Carve 5 words into the tree where your ear had been. What words are they?

H_____ B________

The tree took me.

Sorry!

INTERVIEWER

(before opening, please go to a cafe. buy yourself a little treat you wouldn’t normally allow yourself and put it on a plate)

Sit across from it (the treat), give it eye contact. Squint on it, as if it’s making a point. Lick your finger, touch the treat, lick that finger then wag that finger like you’ve understood. Please write a five line treatise on death:

P____ R_____

Are you going to timidly lick the finger of life? That scone will only get more stale. Squinting, wagging a finger like you’ve grasped some truth. Not so, only boldly chomping will allow you to get at the densely breaded, berry-filled heart of the scone called life. Enjoy, for now.

INTERVIEWER

Don’t eat your treat yet. Don’t even bite it.

When did you eat something like this last?

P____ R_____

I almost never eat a scone.

INTERVIEWER

Blood

Black Bile

Yellow Bile

Phlegm

P____ R_____

Phlegm

INTERVIEWER

If you were a crocodile, would you eat lost children?

P____ R_____

Only when hungry.

INTERVIEWER

Put the treat into your hands (messy or not) and look at the plate. What’s wrong with us? Eat your treat without taking your eyes off the plate.

Write down one word:

P____ R_____

Coprophagia.

INTERVIEWER

Do you want to raise kids?

Y / N

P____ R_____

Y

INTERVIEWER

Do you want to live on a boat?

Y / N

P____ R_____

Y

INTERVIEWER

Say if you dig your hands into a pond for clay, what’s the first thing running through your mind?

P____ R_____

No bugs! No snakes! No slime! No bugs!

INTERVIEWER

Lick your lips. Are you drinking coffee?

Y / N

P____ R_____

Y

INTERVIEWER

What’s the average lifespan of a baker?

P____ R_____

58

INTERVIEWER

Do you do anything regularly only to avoid feeling guilty? (please write three lines that rhyme, in each line you should be lying)

P____ R_____

Give often to charity

Fight income disparity

Promote digestive regularity

INTERVIEWER

Who is your fav Greek god?

L___ B______

Athena.

INTERVIEWER

What is your fav animal?

L___ B______

Blue bird.

INTERVIEWER

SOOT

(choose one)

CAKE

L___ B______

one

INTERVIEWER

OK—Pokemon don’t exist, they never did. But you throw a Pokeball at a rock, it cracks open and black ooze flows out. You caught it! All of it! When will you open it back up? Under what circumstances? (2 lines)

L___ B______

Never.

Forever captured in a spherical hell.

INTERVIEWER

Death by:

FIRE

or

DISAPPEARANCE

L___ B______

DISAPPEARANCE 

INTERVIEWER

Death by:

FIRING SQUAD

or

LETHAL INJECTION

L___ B______

LETHAL INJECTION

INTERVIEWER

You hands down won the Yo-Mama Tournament. You blew us away. You’ve since left us in the lurch. What gives? Don’t answer that. But say, if you were so scared you were petrified while your 3rd grade teacher adds the last few bricks to surround you. You’re trapped. It’s dark. You’ve got limited air—how do you feel? Really feel for a second. There’s some lurking feeling there hiding (almost the sneaking suspicion of deja vu). This feeling belongs to some other moment. Can you tell what moment?

L___ B______

birth

INTERVIEWER

Do you have or don’t you have a brother?

If yes, who is he? What does he need to become?

If no, what’s wrong with him? What does he need to cut out of his life?

(please write 5 lines)

L___ B______

In fact, I have two

He was my first fear

He was my first friend

He has become who he is

As we all do.

INTERVIEWER

It is Fall and we need delicious things and wonderful smells. Pumpkin bread, cider, cloves, cinnamon, spice tea. Please write a haiku about a dead body:

L___ B______

filmy eyes dry lips

peeling skin a stench so foul

zombies really suck

INTERVIEWER

You’re in a corn maze, you’ve lost your friends. You call out to them but all you hear are occasional foot steps. You see seven words attached in a line, as if on a string, or the tail of a kite, they are moving through the air into the thick of the corn. You follow them, do you see them? What do they say?

L___ B______

You could save hundreds on car insurance.

INTERVIEWER L___ B______

If you had to chose three nouns to describe memory, what would they be?

B____ E________

nous

rain

neck

INTERVIEWER L___ B______

You are crossing the street. An absurdity and confusion overcomes you in a way you’ve never experienced.

What do you do?

or

Who do you tell?

or

How do you forget?

(five lines, please)

B____ E________

I have to choose someone, anyone, walking up or down the street

And show them I’m scared

I will pull them down with me, holding onto the wrist

If I can get situated onto their back

I can have them walk and live on there, as still as a hump

INTERVIEWER L___ B______

It is Saturday at three PM in the psychic bookstore. It is silent. Books shoot off the shelves into the correct customers’ hands, they never even speak. A customer approaches, startling you. His hands are empty—something’s gone wrong. It’s not working. What title is refusing to cooperate?

B____ E________

YES

INTERVIEWER L___ B______

There is something almost no one knows. You think about it every day, all day.

You cannot stop.

A rift forms.

You become a projection

People reach out, see the light on their fingertips, but find nothing

to grasp on to.

How do you become solid?

(as many lines as necessary)

B____ E________

I tried to be solid. I stared into a black circle in a wall to see if I could see myself from inside the circle. I tried to stand in people or sit in them, to be totally still. They’d move a toe or a finger, I’d move the same, but always late. It was obvious to me, the delay. To them, it made them shiver. I wrapped myself in medical tape like the invisible man. OK, pretty good. I took a bath though, I poked a hole in my side. I fill up with candy. Sometimes I go to parties and ask—“There’s this itch on my back I can't scratch, maybe you could try it?”

INTERVIEWER

Who is your favorite goddess?

K___ R__ G______

Kuan Yin

INTERVIEWER

Who is your favorite god?

K___ R__ G______

Thoth Dionysus.

INTERVIEWER

Since we just had Mabon, and we’re moving close to Samhain, the veil is thinning, there’s a sort of atmospheric loneliness, it’s cold and our bodies and spirits might feel especially closed off, distant from others. (please describe, in the space below, an important ritual we can do this time of year)

K___ R__ G______

The Ritual of Caring Staring (2 people)

Make eye contact

Hold it.

Give a sincere compliment or truth about how you feel about this person.

INTERVIEWER

Take all of the enclosed words (about 30 scraps of paper, each with a different word, that fell out of the note like confetti) into your hands until one word falls out (if more fall out at the same time, no problem, we will consider them just as significant). Write down your word or words here:

K___ R__ G______

WINE SKIN

INTERVIEWER

What country do you most want to visit?

R___ S_______

Chile.

INTERVIEWER

Write a haiku about it.

R___ S_______

Chile is shaped like

Chili, but does it taste

As good as it sounds?

INTERVIEWER

What one word do you most associate with it?

R___ S_______

Primate.

INTERVIEWER

Your eyes and my eyes tend to do the same thing at work. Have you ever been unsure of whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert? Write a limerick about being stuck at a party fully of ass holes.

R___ S_______

Ryan was stuck at a party

He was low on the social hierarchy

No matter how much he drank

The party still stank

So he played with a dog named Marty

INTERVIEWER

There’s a flash flood at the party, it’s suddenly an aquarium, but everyone’s breathing fine. Write a haiku.

R___ S_______

Fuck these Merpeople

Their party sucks and it’s wet

Hope the dog’s okay

INTERVIEWER

NETWORKING

Y or N

K_______ N_____

I die when Instagram dies.

INTERVIEWER

CATS

or

THE SKY

K_______ N_____

CATS.

DUH.

INTERVIEWER

…but if we didn’t have the sky, would we only look at the ground?

K_______ N_____

People would instead look in each other’s eyes.

INTERVIEWER

Please write a haiku as if you were jinxed JYNX and you found your whole family dead:

K_______ N_____

Jinx the cat or Pokemon?

Where is my mother?

She must be gone. At least she left me this lipstick.

INTERVIEWER

Please write three lines about resisting death:

K_______ N_____

I hide, deep, burrowed

in my blankets

the sharp creature waiting

in the other room.

If I’m very still it

might not find me.

INTERVIEWER

Please write three lines about installing an Internet router and modem:

K_______ N_____

It finally arrived in the Amazon box! Now I can use the Internet to buy more socks! Too bad bobby smashed it w/ a bag of rocks.

INTERVIEWER

Say everyone dies at once but the last person you’ve just seen. What is your advice to them, as they’re about to be the last person on earth?

K_______ N_____

Harvest the flesh off the bodies before they start to rot.

INTERVIEWER

Marv shows up at the cat cafe. He’s there at a desk with a tabby. He recognizes you. But he’s unsure, confused. He thinks you’re saying something and cups his ear in your direction. You should say something. 6 lines:

K_______ N_____

Thank you for all that you’ve done.

INTERVIEWER

He’s still having a hard time hearing, he seems frustrated. You pick up a tabby, it’s identical to his. You hold up yours. He holds up his. 6 words leap from you as if from your chest:

K_______ N_____

You were too hard on yourself.

INTERVIEWER

Pick the fourth—you’re cradling Marv’s head as he’s dying. You explain how you’ve learned to love life in a way he can understand, by using that fourth word and expanding on it:

K_______ N_____

It’s a daily practice to accept

myself for where I’m at

and to not be hard on

myself because of my

failures,

faults,

or inadequacies.

[1001journal-blog]

1001′s Grant Gerald Miller on Plot

Grant Gerald Miller was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. His work has appeared or is set to appear in various journals including Hobart, Qu Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Necessary Fiction, and Nimrod.

BOBBY

In your opinion, what disaster scenario is most likely to destroy the earth?

GRANT

I got freaked out by that New York Times article about the Tsunami on the West Coast. But I imagine the effects of global warming will be the main factor, causing all kinds of weird stuff to happen.

But, really. I don't think the earth will be destroyed. People maybe, but the earth should be fine until the sun burns out and sends it hurdling off into space. I think that process will take about 8 minutes (from burnout to hurdle). That would be a neat thing to bear witness to.

BOBBY

What are you learning as a teacher?

GRANT

The biggest think I'm learning about teaching right now is how to teach people who aren't really engaged with the subject matter. Or who don't even particularly want to be in the room at all. All of my teaching experience is with people who have sought out the class and paid their hard-earned money to take the class, and are engaged and excited about whatever it is I'm teaching. I'm teaching an early British Literature survey, which, to be completely honest, also bores me to tears. So it's been interesting trying to engage my students about a subject matter that even I'm not that excited about. But, surprisingly, within the class I have a lot of freedom when it comes to lesson plans and such. I can basically do whatever I want, so long as it pertains to The Canterbury Tales or Shakespeare's Sonnets or whatever.

BOBBY

Is it a writing class or an English class?

GRANT

It is a 200 level English class. Most of my students are majoring in something else, and are required to take it.

BOBBY

Have you figured out how to make it help your writing at all, or do you find any elements from Arthurian stories sneaking into your own stuff? And suits of armor, any blood, any invisible knights?

GRANT

I already started writing a story about a human who teaches early British Literature. Ha!

BOBBY

How are you getting people into it? Or at least getting them to learn something from something so boring?

GRANT

They have to write a couple of essays over the semester, so I engage them a lot with writing and the writing process. We also do a lot of group work, which makes them automatically more engaged (because they are forced to be, heh heh). I've had them do group writing, hash out ideas with each other, and I even had them write their own poems and "lays" in class. We have fun.

BOBBY

Lays?

GRANT

It's a very specific type of love poem that was popular in the 12 and 13th century. The structure is pretty much your traditional story structure: "Integration, disintegration, reintegration."

BOBBY

Do you give any constraints to their poems? Or any prompts?

GRANT

I usually give them some type of prompt, and they either write about football, or about how they're being forced to write a poem. Ha! But I get the sense that for the most part they're pretty engaged.  

BOBBY

What's the first thing you focus on when you’re teaching plot? Like, how do you start?

GRANT

What is a plot? The main events of a piece of writing, presented in a certain sequence by an author?

I teach plot as sort of the all-encompassing, pervasive, glue of a piece of writing that holds it together. Kind of like Aristotle's aether. It's like the gel that holds the planets in space.

Teaching plot is mostly teaching the elements of what comprises a plot, right? So if we're talking about character driven fiction, the plot is the aether that holds your characters and their motives, your setting, your themes, your premise, and all of your events and their sequences in place. Right?

BOBBY

What do you think of Kevin Brockmeier’s piece, The Ceiling? What do you think of its plot structure?

GRANT

And if you're talking about writing as process I tell students to think about plot, but not to worry too much about that when starting out on a piece. Things have a tendency to surface through the act of writing, right?

BOBBY

Oooh, specific stuff surfaces through the aether or takes form from the aether? Like specific events or gluey instances take shape that bring characters together?

GRANT

The Ceiling is very rich. And I think a really good example of a story that is rich on many different levels. Have your students state what the plot is: "A guy feels alienated from his wife, but he loves his kid, and he finds out his wife is cheating on him, and blah blah blah,” but all the while that this stuff is going on, there is a black square descending on the planet and it sort of crushes everybody.

That is essentially the "plot," but there is so much material to hash out inside of that plot. What are some of the the things inside of that plot that emerge for you? i.e. themes, characters' behavior toward the ceiling, etc etc

BOBBY

I was trying to think of if it's written like it's got two plots, an internal and an external. In the first half, no one is paying any attention to the ceiling except for the narrator and the reader, we think maybe it's nothing, but we feel a little tense throughout, we really get a sense of maybe-there's-doom-a-comin while we're getting little scenes of the marriage breaking.

The two sides blend together completely at the end, we really feel the outside world's been crushed as well as the inside world. But do you think it is that kind of two-sides structure?

GRANT

The plot is definitely comprised of two very large elements, right? On a close reading of that story you'll find that everything Brockmeier did from the first line "There was a sky that day" to every scene in the story, that he chose to do things very deliberately. I think a large part of teaching plot is demystifying plot, breaking it down into the disparate elements that comprise "plot."

I basically teach plot as an introduction to the rest of the material I'm gonna cover in class over the semester. Have your students dissect The Ceiling into its disparate parts: characters, themes (themes is a big one), scene, exposition, setting, connection, disconnection, characters' motivations, the ceiling, why aren't people freaking out about the ceiling? etc etc.

So in a way teaching plot is simply looking at the ingredients that comprise your "plot casserole" (I'm trying to switch up metaphors here, but I really wanted to say the planets that make up your galaxy.)

BOBBY

What about using the whiteboard, writing the categories down (themes, characters, scenes), then listing the points that hit these through the story?

Or like, how do you break it down as a group but keep track of how it's been broken down?

Do you like things like Freytag’s pyramid?

GRANT

I do use that to explain plot structure. I like to break it down to its simplest terms for people. it goes by many names: "conflict, climax, resolution," "Balance, upset balance, balance restored," "Integration, disintegration, reintegration," etc.

BOBBY

What is the ‘crisis’ moment in a plot?

GRANT

This is why I like that "connection, disconnection" handout that A.M. uses. What, in your interpretation is the "crisis" moment in The Ceiling?

BOBBY

Hmm, I feel like there's the suspicion of crisis, like it's planted in the narrator's head when his wife's foot is on their neighbor's chair, then really starts forming or building when the ceiling metaphor enters the scene, I feel like the big crisis moment is when he sends his son to knock on the glass when he sees his wife on a date with their neighbor.

Then there's the explosion of the water tower.

GRANT

See? A good plot is made up of crises within crises within crises. But all of the crises function within what I believe to be the single most important thing to keep in mind when writing a piece of character driven fiction. Do you know what that might be? Hint: It's one of the "disparate parts of plot" that I mentioned earlier.

BOBBY

Connection, disconnection? Themes?

GRANT

THEMES!!!! And yes, use the whiteboard to keep track of the disparate elements of plot structure. Have students call them out and you write them on the board. Then look at each one and see how it functions, and to what purpose it functions in The Ceiling.

BOBBY

How do you like to explain themes?

GRANT

If plot is a galaxy (similar to our galaxy), I believe that themes are the sun, and characters are the earth.

BOBBY

Warmed by the sun, someday (if we make it) blown away by the sun?

GRANT

What is a theme?

BOBBY

Theme is something returned to over and over. Or maybe it's like an aesthetic from which to pull out images and metaphor?

I'm not sure...

Is there like an overarching system of themes and little themes which come naturally out of it? What about when themes clash? Maybe this is too architectural... maybe themes come out naturally.

GRANT

I interpret themes as the Big Picture underlying reason that a piece of writing exists. And themes tend to emerge as a writer is writing a piece. What are some of the themes in The Ceiling? Themes are usually big abstract concepts, right?

DEATH

DISCONNECTION

CONNECTION

LONELINESS

EXISTENTIAL ANGST

LOVE

FEAR

dig?

BOBBY

So like different driving forces?

GRANT

Yes.

BOBBY

What are they in the galaxy analogy?

Cosmological disturbances?

Or physical laws?

GRANT

They are the sun, fueling your characters (earth!) to do what they do.

BOBBY

GRAVITY or SOLAR FLARES ? Thaaat's right, sorry, you said earlier. Sun: theme. Earth: characters.

GRANT

In my interpretation, anyway. This is obviously all my humble, subjective, approach to understanding writing in my own way.  

BOBBY

So in your own process then, when do you feel the sun heating up?

Do you start with the earth or with the sun?

GRANT

That's a good question. All of these approaches (free write, frietag, whatevs) are just different approaches or ways to get into a piece of writing. Sometimes i start with a character. Sometimes I start with a theme. Sometimes I start with a sentence that sounds pretty.

More often than not, themes emerge as I write. I always tell students, when writing, to a) boil your story down to a single sentence, write it on an index card and tape it to your wall (or wherever you can see it when writing), and b) write down every theme that emerges from a piece of writing and do the same.  

Then have all of your scenes, expositions, characters, paragraphs, sentences, words, work toward that sentence or that theme.

BOBBY

Can you move closer to the sun? Or do you have to move around on the earth to find shade? Either way, does the sun ever get too hot? What do you do if it gets too hot?

GRANT

If the sun gets too hot, you cool it off.

Always show don't tell.

Have your students break down The Ceiling into its disparate parts. Have them identify the characters from most important to least. Have them identify the themes that emerge.  

Have them identify the plot: i.e. "what happens."

Write it all on the board.

BOBBY

Do you ever try to push your characters into misery?

GRANT

Your conclusion, or point, should be something like these are all different elements that we talk about when we talk about plot. Right?

I've never written a character that wasn't utterly suffering in some way.

LOL

BOBBY

Who are your characters? Do you feel like they’re you suddenly in a new situation? Or are they parts of you you haven’t heard from before?

GRANT

My characters are parts of me, but I'm part of everything that exists in the entire universe, so there part of everything that exists in the entire universe, too. On a less abstract note, in one of my classes one of my students stole my sunglasses. I don't know who stole them. I made a joke about it in class to them. But really, I don't really care about the sunglasses or who stole them.

But I'm writing a story about a brit-lit professor who gets their sunglasses stolen by a student, and because of it becomes very paranoid and the story goes really really dark (I love the likes of Kafka, Stacey Levine, Ottessa Moshfegh) really really quickly. So it's hard to say. I use some of my own experiences in some of my writing and characters, and in others I don't at all.

I believe the writing itself tells me what to do a lot of the time.  

BOBBY

What makes a good resolution in your mind? Like when are you really moved by resolution?

GRANT

Same with resolution. The writing dictates. In my own writing I always know when a story or poem is finished. I just do. That said, I have a whole bunch of unfinished stuff lying around.

BOBBY

Have you always known when a story is finished or were you uncertain how to tell when you first started writing?

GRANT

I appreciate really "a-ha moment" resolutions (Fight Club, Book of Eli, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc) but I don't think I'm clever enough for all that.

I usually don't know how a story is going to end. But I find that when I start a piece of writing with at least some vague idea of how it's going to end, the whole process is a lot smoother.

BOBBY

Where do you write? Out walking or at a cafe? Do you need different locations depending on the stage of the work or the kind of work you’re doing?

GRANT

I primarily write at my kitchen table.

BOBBY

You write in the mornings or at night?

By hand or computer?

GRANT

I write on the computer 99.9% of the time. I take a lot of notes and make a lot of lists by hand, but I mostly write on the old Macbook.

GRANT

Historically, I've always woken up, read for a while, and then wrote for as long as I could. Now that I'm in grad school I don't have the luxury of all that sometimes. So I have to go day by day. But I tailor my schedule to make sure I have at least an hour to write each day.

A.M. write a poem everyday and send it to each other. We hold each other accountable in that way. So even if I can't get my hour in, I get something out in the world every day.

BOBBY

Yeah, you have to burn each other's house down if you don't send a poem right?

GRANT

Basically. Or we berate each other and call each other horrible names.

BOBBY

What have you learned working for Black Warrior Review?

GRANT

I'm reading poetry for them. They have a neat process that is way more democratic than 1001 was. Mainly because there's like 10-15 people voting poems into BWR, as opposed to just you and I reading everything. BWR gets a LOT of submissions and has a lot of clout, and it's nice to come into that fold of a journal that's been up and running for a long time, all systems in place, lots of experience, whereas with 1001 we were pretty much just making it up as we went along.

BOBBY

BWR do any readings?

GRANT

Yes. There are a lot of different readings hosted by different campus programs, which is good because Tuscaloosa might be the single most boring and uninteresting place I've ever been for any significant amount of time. But Tuscaloosa being so awful is actually really good for me because I only leave my apartment to go to school and to teach, which means I get a lot of work done with minimal distraction.

BOBBY

How do you do with focusing? You like absolute quiet?

GRANT

I still have trouble focusing. But that's always been part of my process. For ever hour of "creative output" I probably have three hours of pacing around the apartment, staring out the window, watching football, pacing around the apartment some more. But now that I'm not just writing, and also learning how to be a student again, I have do things like set timers for myself and not let myself stop whatever it is I'm doing until the timer goes off.

BOBBY

While you're pacing, what's going through your mind?

GRANT

Yeah. When I'm writing it's usually me working out the writing. When I'm doing school work it's just sheer procrastination and who knows what's going on up there.