Art of the Short Story | Aimee Bender | Talks at Google

Miss Bender is the author of the short story collections the Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures and the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, GQ, Harper's, Granda McSweeney's, and she received a Pushcart Prize in 2002. Ms. Bender has created some of the world's most well regarded works of magical fiction, magical realism. Sorry. Today the the LA Times referred to her as Hemingway on an acid trip. So I'm honored to have her here today with us. So please welcome Amy Bender.

I'm going to go to the chair, So thank you, Megan, for having me and thanks everyone for coming. It's really fun to come to Google because, you know, you don't work here, you don't get to come. So I'm sure everyone says that, but it has this mythic status, like what is it like? And it's totally living up to it. So it's a treat. So I'm going to. I think I'll read one story. This is excellent. There's a clock. Most places don't supply a clock. I like that. And then there's an M and M. I also like that. So I'm going to read a story that's maybe about 25 minute story, half hour story, and then I'm happy to answer whatever questions. I like talking about writing a lot, so I think that will be the format. So I think the story I'm going to read is one in this book, Woeful Creatures that I'd been writing a novel a few years before it that became the novel. I have out an invisible sign of my own. And there was a scene I'd written, but it didn't end up fitting in the novel. The tone just didn't jive with what the novel became. So I kind of sat with it a while and then started to shape around it until it became a story. So it was like a little tangential novel piece that separated and became its own little bubble. And for some reason it's the one I'm enjoying reading out loud the most these days. And it's called Fruit and Words. So there we were, Steve and I, smack in the middle of the same fight we'd had a million times before. A fight I knew so well I could graph it. We were halfway down the second slope of resignation, the place where we usually went to different rooms and despaired quietly on our own. And right at the moment that I thought for the first time in seven years that maybe things were just not going to work out after all. That was the moment. He suggested we drive to Vegas right then and tie the knot. Now, I said, and he nodded with gravity. Now we packed as fast as we could, hoping we could pack faster than those winged feet of doubt, driving 100 miles per hour in silence from sand to trees to mountains to dry plains to that tall electric glitter. Parked, checked in, changed clothes, held hands together. We walked up to the casino chapel, but as soon as Steve put his nose in the room, well, that's when those winged feet float to rest on his shoulder. Reeling, he said he had a migraine and needed to lie down. An hour later he told me, washcloth on forehead, that he had to fly home that instant and could I drive back by myself. I stood at the doorway and watched him pack his nicest suit, folding it into corners and angles, his chest and legs and back and butt in squares and triangles, shut and carried. Goodbye, we said to each other, and the kiss was an old dead sock. I spent the day there, floating in the glowing blue swimming pool in my brand new black swimming suit, cocooning myself in a huge white towel that smelled of sunshine, walking past tigers and dolphins. I slept diagonal on the king bed. After checking out, I went to the car, which was boiling hot, put my bag in the trunk and geared up the engine and turned on the air conditioner and pulled out of the parking structure. The road extended through the desert, a long dry tongue. I didn't feel like listening to music, and I was speeding along, wondering if to all people the idea of marrying felt so much like being buried alive, as in particular the idea of marrying this man did. Anticipating the talks, we were going to have to get to the point where we both admitted we were only in it out of loyalty and fear. My mouth dried up and I had a sudden and very intense crack craving for a mango. I had never eaten a mango before in my life, but the craving was vast, sweeping, feverish. Great, I thought. It's not mango season and it is not mango country, and I knew those bright flavored gums would not cut it. After half an hour the craving was so bad I stopped at a gas station and tried anyway, bought a pack of Orange Pink Candy, Mango Tango, but the taste of each flat circle, so sugary and similar to all the other sugar flavors, made me long for the real one even more. I stopped at every market I saw, but the fruit they had was pathetic. Soft, mealy apples, gray bananas, the occasional hard green plum. The road was quiet and empty of cars. I sped past gas stations and fast food. I was thinking seriously of driving straight to the airport and emptying my savings to fly myself to Africa so I could find one there. Easy off the tree, the gentle give at the touch of my thumb when far ahead, several miles up the road, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a shack. It was part of a tiny commercial strip facing a doughnut store and an oil lube filter station. From a distance it looked colorful and lively, and as I got closer and closer I thought I might be hallucinating from the heat because as far as I could tell, the front of the shack was full of trays and tables and shelves and piles of ripe, beautiful fruit. My mouth started to water and I pulled over and parked my car on the shoulder of the road. The highway was still empty of cars, and the fast food donut chain was empty of cars, and the oil lube filter was closed, so crossing the street was a breeze. The awning of the store was a sweet blue and white gingham, and sure enough, there were huge tables burgeoning with fruit. Fruit vivid clementines, golden apples, dark plums, swollen peaches, three patterns of yellow and brown pear. The awning said fruit and words. I went inside. I found a tan woman behind the counter, perched on a stool, dusting a deep red apple with her sleeve. Hello, I said. Wow, you have such beautiful fruit here. She had a flat face, so flat I was scared to see her in profile. Hello, she said mildly. My hopes were swelling as I walked by, a luscious stack of papayas surging as I passed a group of star fruit. And then, indeed, next to a humble pile of four, I found the small sign that said what I wanted to hear. And there they were, gentle and orange, the smell emanating from their skin so rich I could pick up a whiff from a distance. She nodded at me. They're very good, she said. Those mangoes are excellent quality. She placed the polished apple in front of herself like she was teacher and student all at once. I scooped up all four and took them to the counter. I felt a wave of utter, unearned competence. Ha ha. To everyone else. Finding fresh mangoes 50 miles out of Las Vegas seemed to me in no uncertain terms, like some kind of miracle. You have no idea how wonderful this is, I told her, beaming. I've been having the most powerful mango craving, and here we are in the desert, of all places. She shrugged, agreeable. She'd heard this before. Where do you get them? I asked. She picked at the point of her eye. I Get the fruit as a trade, she said. There's a buyer who likes the salt here, so he brings me fruit as payment. What a deal for you, I said, getting all this gorgeous fruit for just a little salt. I brought a mango up to my nose and smelled the sweetness inside its skin. The woman sniffed. It's not regular salt, she said. She indicated behind me with her chin. Ah, I said. What's all that? Those are the words, she said. I kept my arms full of mangoes and took a step nearer. As far as I could tell, the entire back wall of the shop was covered floor to ceiling with cutout letters. They were piled high on shelves, making big words and small words crammed close together, letters overlapping. Go closer, she said. You can't see well from here. She gave me a shove on my shoulder blade. As I approached, I could see that the words weren't just cut from cardboard. Each word was different. I first saw the word nut. It was a large capitalized word, nut, and it was made out of something beige. I couldn't really tell what it was, but then I saw the word grass, which was woven from tall blades, green and thready and lemon, cleverly twisted into cursive with peels and pulp, letting off a wonderful smell. So I went right up to nut and discovered that it was in fact crumbled pieces of nuts all mixed together into a tan, gluey paste. Isn't this interesting? I said to the woman. I found paper cut clean with an X acto knife and a calligraphy organdy fluffing out so frothy I could hardly read it, and hair, which was strawberry blonde and curled up at the edge of the H and the leg of the R. The man who'd left Las Vegas had strawberry blonde hair, so I ignored that one and picked up pearl instead. This is pricey, I bet, I said, and she gave me an anxious look like I was going to drop was stunning, not made of tiny pearls, but somehow one solid piece of pearl rippling out rainbow colors across its capitals. I put it back carefully on the shelf next to barnacle, prickly and dry looking. Why do you make these? I said. They're so beautiful. And they were. They were beautiful on their own, and they were beautiful altogether. I thought of her in her desert studio hands, dusty apron, splash, sweat pouring, hammering out the final O in radio. She was making the world simple. She made the world steady. Somehow people liked the words, she told me, picking up her apple to shine some more. I made them for fun. And then I got rich. Well, I'd Definitely like to buy these four mangoes, I said. She pressed the register. Ten dollars. And just curiously, how much are the words? I kept my eyes on that wall, wanting to lean my head on pillow. Depends, she said. They vary. Plus, you see, those are just the solids. What? I stroked the petals that made up rose. I mean, those are just the solids. I put the solids on display first because they're easiest to understand. Solid colors, I said, staring at plaid. Solid solids, she said. Liquids are in the back. Gases are in the back of the back. Both are very pricey, she said. But I'll charge you just $3 to look. $3 for the tour. Liquid words, I said, and I brought out my wallet. She rang up my mangoes in the tour. I moved closer to the register. I think I'd like to buy a solid, too, I said. I was feeling suddenly more liberated than I had in seven years. I wanted to take over the store. I wanted to bathe in plum juice, rediscover my body, and adorn it in kiwi circles. I bit into a mango. The skin broke quick and the flesh, meaty and wet, slid inside my mouth. The nearly embarrassing free for all lusciousness of ripe fruit. Oh, I said. Incredible. She gave me two dollars and change. I licked mango juice off my wrist and turned back to the words. Can I buy a solid? I asked. She shrugged. Of course, she said. Which one? I wanted them all, so I just pointed to the first I'd seen. How much for nut? Interesting choice, she said, walking over and pulling it off the shelf. Nut? There are seven different kinds of nuts in here. Macadamia, peanut, walnut, pecan, cashew, garbanzo, and almond. I raised my eyebrows, impressed. Wow, I said. She just stood there. Isn't garbanzo a bean? I asked. She held it out to me. I'll give it to you for 14, she said. $2 a nut. There was a 10 in my wallet between four ones, and I lifted them all out. I had another drippy bite of mango. I won't eat it, I told her, indicating nut. She gave me a lip smile and took my money. You can eat it, she said. I don't care. Scooping all my purchases into a brown bag, she lifted a simple silver key off the wall behind her and beckoned for me to follow. We stopped at a gray door. Before she inserted the key, the woman put a hand on my sleeve. Be careful, she said. These are very delicate words. Don't drip mango on anything. I had almost finished that first mango by now the most incredible piece of food I'd ever eaten in my life, and I held the remains of the pit away from me. My lips were sticky with juice. I felt the horror of Vegas dissipating, clarity descending like a window wrapped around my heart. She turned the knob and I followed her in. The back room was a square with a glass door at the far wall. This room was full of shelves, too, but the words were even harder to read from far away. I walked quietly up to them. Don't touch, she hissed. The liquid words were set up in two ways. Most of them were shooting through glass pipes that shaped the letters. This looked really neat, but I felt a little bit like it was cheating. Some of the others were liquid spilled onto a glass board forming the letters. This was less cheating but looked cheaper. I walked down the row. I was not thrilled by water or Coke. I was drawn to rubbing alcohol, which was done with the piping and took up almost a whole shelf. It was a good one because it looked just like the water, but I trusted that it wasn't. There was one called Poison no Specification, and the liquid was dark brown. The letters were fancy on that one, like an old Fashioned theater brochure. I found blood, real blood, I whispered, and I brought the mango back close to me, licked its pulpy pit. She nodded. Of course. From what? I asked, voice a little higher, and she didn't answer. It shot bright through the pipe as if in a huge loose vein. I didn't like that blood one. I was recording all this in a monologue in my head, and I wondered then who I would tell this story to, and for the moment I couldn't think of anyone. This made me feel bad, so I went over to Lake and held that, and it had little tiny ferns floating in it and I thought it was pretty. It was next to Ocean, which was looking more or less exactly like Lake, and that's when I wondered if the woman was really truthful. And how would anyone know? I wanted to buy Ocean, too. I wanted to have the word ocean with me all the time. It was way better than nut, but I didn't really trust seemed likely that it was deep down tap. I paused by milk, the sole white liquid, soothing just to look at gases, she said. Okay, I said. Sure. I'd like to see the gases. Why not? My hands were now hardening with stickiness, each finger gluing slightly to its neighbor. I wanted to wash them, but instead I dropped the gooey pit into my purse near my wallet. The woman gave me a disapproving look and brought out another Silver key, this one from her pocket. She turned and clicked, and we went through the glass door in the back of the back room. The gas room was empty. Oh, I said. Hmm. I worried for a second that she'd been robbed and was just now finding out. Be very, very careful, she whispered then. This is expensive. She looked tense beneath her tan, each of her features tight in its place. More expensive than pearl, I said. Much more, she said. This takes very difficult concentration. This is my most challenging work. Look here, she said. Come here and look. She walked over to one of the shelves on the wall, and close up I could see there was more glass tubing. Not much, but one word's worth it spelled smoke. Soft granules of ash floated through the m. It's a good one, I said. I like it. Most of them, she said, still whispering. In this room don't have the tubing. Oh. I bobbed my head, not understanding. See, she continued. There are many, many gas words in this room, but you might not be able to read them. I looked to the shelves and saw nothing, saw shelves that were empty, saw how my apartment would look in a month when Steve had cleared out his books and his bookends. Top shelf. Xenon, the woman said. It's there. It's just very hard to see. I can see it because I have very good eyes for it because it is my medium. I looked to the top shelf. There's no xenon there, I said. There's nothing. Trust me, she said. There's xenon. I shook my head. I shifted my feet a few times. There was poison in the room before dark and available, and a thin wire of fear started to cut and coil in my stomach. Argon, she said, is on shelf four, below xenon. Noble gas number two, I said. She nodded. I prefer the noble gases. I bet, I said. There's no argon there, I said. It's there, she said. Be extremely careful. I spoke slowly, coated now in a very mild shellac of panic. How? I said. How can it just be there? It would dissipate. I took chemistry. It can't just sit there. Argon, I said. Can't just sit there. I put guidelines in the air, she said. I make a formation in the air. I turned toward the entrance. I think it's time for me to go, I said. Neon, she, she said. Is on shelf number three. But right before I walked to the door, I reached out a hand, which was so hard and gluey from the mango juice, reached it out just to wipe it slightly on the very tip of the shelf. The coil in my stomach took my fingers there. I barely even noticed what I was doing. The woman drew in her breath in agony. Ah. She choked as I got in my little wipe. Wipe. You broke it. I broke what? I said. Broke what? You broke air, she said. You need to pay for it. You broke it. You broke air. Then she pointed to a sign I hadn't seen before, tucked half behind a shelf, a half hidden laminated sign that said Visitors must pay for broken merchandise. There's air there still, I said. That's no special air. It was air in the shape of air, she said. It took me a while to train that space. It was air. That's $300. What? I said. I won't pay that, I said, speaking louder. I didn't even break it. Look, there's tons of air around. There's air everywhere. I waved my hand in the space indicating air, and she let out another, louder shriek. That was Hope, she said. You just broke hope. Hope, I said. And now I went straight to the glass door. Broke Hope. Hope is not a gas. You can't form hope. The door, thank God, was unlocked, and I swung it open and stalked into the Liquid room. The woman was right on my heels. I caught Hope, she said. I made it into a gas. I want to go now, I said. There's no possible way to catch Hope. Please. My voice was gaining height. I didn't believe her, but still, of all things to wreck. Well, she said, I went to wedding after wedding after wedding in Las Vegas, and I capped the bottle each time right when they said I do. This made me laugh for a second, but then I had to stop because I thought I might choke. I could just see those couples now, perched at opposite ends of a living room couch, bookending the air between them, the thickest, most formed air around that uncrossable, unbreakable, impossible air. Finally signing the papers that would send them to different addresses, I thought of the seven years I'd spent with Steve and how at first when we'd kissed, his lips had been a boat made of roses and how now they were a freight train of lead so that I wouldn't cry. I put my hand near my face and made a pushing motion, move some wind toward her. I'm Queen of hope, I said. Here, have some of mine. She grabbed blood from the Liquid Room shelves. Give me my money for air, she said, waving the blood in my face. I opened the door to the solid room and ran through it. I kept my back arched so she wouldn't touch me I couldn't pay the money and I wouldn't pay it. It was air, for God's sake, but I didn't want that blood on me, didn't want that blood anywhere close to me. I'm sorry. I yelled as I edged out the front. Sorry. I looked past the fruit to locate my car, and as I did my eye grazed over the solid words, familiar now, but on the bottom shelf I suddenly saw cat and dog in big brown capitals, which I hadn't seen before, and my stomach bulked. The woman kept yelling, you owe me money, and I hid the dead warmth of the outside air. Everything was still. My car sat across the street waiting for me, playing acid. The woman was right behind me, yelling, you owe me $300, and I took nut out of my bag and threw it behind me, where it broke on the street into a million shavings. Nut. I yelled. I got into my car, key shaking. Vandal. She yelled back, and she didn't even try to cross the street but just stood there at the front of the blue awning store with blood in her arms, and then she reached back and pelted my car with a tangelo and a pineapple and one huge hard cantaloupe. I locked my doors, and right when I put my key into the ignition she took blood and threw that too. It hit the car square on the passenger side window, cracking on the top and opening up like an egg, dripping red down the window until the letters ran clear. Maybe it was just juice, but that one I trusted. That one seemed real to me. Hands trembling, I put my foot on the accelerator and the car started quickly, warm from the sunlight, the desert spreading out hot and fruitless. The window to my right was streaking with red now. I kept a hand on the car lock, making sure it was down across the street. The woman pulled back her arm, which was an awfully good arm, by the way. She was some kind of baseball superstar, and she let fly a few guavas, which splatted blue against my rear window. I drove away as fast as I could. The shack and the woman still throwing grew small in my rear view mirror. I drove and drove for 80 miles without pausing, just getting away, just speeding away as the blood dried on the window, away from the piles of tangerines, from the star fruit clumped and stolen constellations, from the seven different mutations of apple in an hour. I desperately needed to go to the bathroom, so I pulled into a gas station. I still had the brown bag of mangoes with me when I opened it up they were all black and rotten with flies crawling over them. I dumped the whole bag. The one I'd eaten was just a pit, which I removed from my purse and kept on the passenger seat. But by the time I got home and pulled into the empty driveway, it too had rotted away into a soft, weak ball. Thanks. So I'm happy to answer whatever questions. While I eat my M and Ms. What's it like to work at Google? I really want to ask questions of you. Yes. So in terms of when did I start writing about it or living it? I mean, it's. As a kid, I felt very attracted to the books about magical lands. More so than, like, there was a.

Phase.

Kind of 11 and 12, when my friends were discovering Judy Blume. Everyone loved Judy Blume, and I read all the Judy Blooms and I liked it, and they were helpful in their way. You know, they were instructive. But I loved, loved the books that were the Narnia books or the Oz books or the Madeleine Lee Engel books or the. The ones that were fairytale like and had that magical part. And I think in some ways it was just what I was drawn to was a kind of leap into a new place or why I like to read was to be taken to something that I couldn't picture without this world built. And so that was very much a strong part of my childhood. But then I kind of thought for a while that you were supposed to give that up once you kind of became an adolescent and then into adulthood. And it was post college that I had friends or people saying, you know, check out Garcia Marquez or check out Calvino or look at Isabel Allende or Haruko Murakami or any of these writers that are a little bit strange in how they build a world. And that was a big relief because I did kind of put it into childhood. But for me, it's part of the pleasure of metaphor, too, which is that I just like to think of something that isn't quite the real world as we know it, but hopefully in some way reflects something. Yeah. Who do I read? I read a lot of different things. The book I read recently that I loved was Mary Gaitskill's novel Veronica, which is beautifully written novel, really heavy. It was an intense read, but it's a really strong one. And I guess I like to read writers that are using language in a way that feels interesting and kind of fresh. Amy Hempel had a Collected Stories come out this year, and she's a great writer and writes these kind of tiny pieces that Are just really crisp and beautiful and moving. And then I love to read those writers I just named. Or I'm a big Linda Berry fan. Or I was recently reading some botany books, which was fun. So some nonfiction too. I've been reading a lot about food. So arrange poetry. I like to read poetry a lot.

Did you read Kelly Link?

I like Kelly Link a lot. Yeah. I just taught a fairy tale class in the spring and I used Magic for Beginners. And it was really fun to teach it and the students really loved it. So, yeah, I like her a lot. And Judy Budnitz, who's. She's another short story writer that has a kind of magical feel. She's of kind too. She lives in San Francisco, I think. Yeah. Yes. I love Angela Carter. Just love Angela Carter. Ah, thank you. It's really nice. Yeah, she's amazing. Sentences that are like velvet. So lush. So what else can you talk about.

What you were thinking when you wrote the story you just read?

Sure. I mean, I. So I was writing this novel and then I kind of wrote about the store. And I think at the time, and I don't exactly know why, I was a little bit obsessed with the idea of things being named for what they were. There was something that felt very important to me about, you know, naming things. And I wrote another story about a land where everything was mislabeled. So the table would be called an owl and the water would be called a tree. And everyone gets confused. So there's something very comforting to me about that. So then the height of that would be if the word itself was made of that object. And there was something pleasing to me about imagining that. And I'm a big believer that the writing is going to come from your own engagement or interest in whatever you're writing. That if I'm really bored with what I'm writing, it's not even fair to put that on a reader. So I was just very interested in hearing about all these words and writing about them. So then the store developed and I liked the idea that they would become liquids and gases. And I do like the noble gases myself. I just always thought that they. Such a nice name for some gases. So it kind of developed that way. And then it was sort of figuring out what exactly was going on with the character, which I think was happening anyway, but sort of taking a step back a little bit and thinking that there was something about loss and a little bit about despair in a way too, because it's kind of a horror story by the end. And it definitely doesn't have an upbeat twist. Yeah. So I'm one of the ones with a very set regiment. And the way it happened for me is that I kind of didn't have. I think about this a lot because I think it really affects the work. The technique sort of affects the work. But basically, for a while, I was kind of writing whenever I had the time or whenever I felt inspired. And it had a very kind of serious feel to it. And when I went to grad school now, 12 years ago, and I thought, if I'm going to be in grad school, I should try writing every day. And so I started with an hour and a half. And the rule I made myself was, I have to sit here for an hour and a half. It was just the beginning of email for, like, you know, lay people like me. We're not on the cutting edge. So it was like telnet for the world of graduate school. So I would check email first, but I would have maybe one email from some other person that had email. So. So it was very easy to check email and then do the work. And the rule was I just have to sit there. I could go to the bathroom, but other than that, maybe get a little food, but no phone calls, no anything else. And it totally changed the way that I wrote because I got really bored. And suddenly, instead of leaving when I was bored and doing something else, I had to kind of sit through the boredom. And on the other side of the boredom, something would happen and I'd have to entertain myself because I'm just stuck there. And so the writing got a lot weirder and it got funnier, which surprised me too. And it had more of a push to it. It just really helped it. It kind of charged it up in some way. And then I've now extended it to two hours, but that's about my limit. I can sometimes do 2 hours 15. But basically, I write down the time when I sit down. It's very anal, but it works for me. And then I get to stop then. And something about the steadiness has really helped. So sometimes people will say, well, if you're on a roll, do you stop? But I stop. Somehow my sense of the steadiness is more important than if I'm on a given roll on a given day. Yeah, To me, it sounded a lot darker than how you were portraying it. So I'm just kind of curious. When you're writing it, does your own work seem a lot darker to you than it actually may come across that as the end result that my voice was making it seem lighter than it felt on the page. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, there's something, I think, a little bit fun about the reading of it, but I'm glad to hear on the page that it reads darker because I feel like the reading is sort of an additional thing, but where it needs to exist is on the page. I mean, that's where I'm putting the effort. I'm not a performer, you know, like, I like reading my stories, but the story itself is. That's the job that I did. So, yeah, I'm not always aware sometimes when I'm writing how dark something will or won't be. But I think when I tend to go to a place that feels darker, I feel a little bit happy as a writer because I feel it just feels like a release of something. So it almost. The more frustrating times in writing are when I won't go there and I'm kind of fighting myself. But if I just go to the place and kill some people or whatever, then that's, you know, that's a pleasure. It's really the great thing about writing. No one gets hurt. Yeah. What do you do to promote getting.

Back on that role?

Do you read a bit of what you wrote yesterday? You mean when I return to something? Yeah. If I'm on a roll and I sit down the next morning, usually I can pick it back up again because it's kind of there and I'm interested in it. But it does happen that I'll be on a roll one day and I'll look at it the next day and it won't be interesting. And those things I think wouldn't be interesting anyway, even if I'd played out the roll. Which is disappointing because you think, I have this great thing I wrote yesterday and I look and I feel like, eh, kind of bored, you know, second paragraph. But sometimes I'll return and I'll just be rereading. And in the rereading I'll start to cut and I'll start to add and it'll be like a re engagement with whatever it was and then it picks back up. Do you ever write notes to yourself or something? Try to get back into that same state of mind? I'll write notes to myself a little bit. But this is my experience of it. And other writers have a very different sense of it. But my sense of it is if there's depth to it, you will be able to get back to it. And the notes. I will sometimes write notes and I would say 8 out of 10 times the notes don't work. That. It's like, it's a surface feeling of something. And if I just sit with it and keep day after day going at it, then the things that have meat to them will return. It's the way I feel about. It's sort of like a decision making process in a way. You know, when you have a tough decision to make and you just try and ride the wave of it and all these options kind of go at you and you just sort of sit with them for like even a week, things change and you start to lean towards one more than the other. You know, I mean, it's hard with certain decisions, but it sort of feels like that. Like you just kind of see what sticks. And that's how I go at it. Yeah. Yeah. Two questions.

When you're working on these novels, do you work on, like, lots of. One, lots of them. Like you work on a little bit here, a little bit there, or do you just pick one thing and go straight through it? And two, why not?

Why not? Okay, so the first question. I work on many things at once. Yeah. My rule is I have two hours. I can do anything in terms of writing. So sometimes I'll work on the novel for a minute and then I'll feel like, ugh. And then I'll work on a story for an hour and a half and then I'll be bored. And then I'll write a bad poem like that. You know, that'd be an average day. And then sometimes if the novel's going well and I'm on some kind of roll, then I'll be working on that for a while. It's a pleasure when the two hours is full of one thing, but it's not the norm. Okay. Yeah.

You say you write for two hours. Are you consciously working for the rest of the day or not?

Consciously. Oh, yeah. And that was in relation to her question about this regimen, what it did when I changed it to every day. It meant that the guilt diminished a lot. The dread about I should be writing, which I think a writer carries around all the time, it just felt like, well, I am writing in the morning and so then the rest of the day I can forget about it. And I think unconsciously there's stuff happening in terms of the work, but I know that I'm going to sit down at that time and it just meant that I could enjoy the rest of the day a lot more. So if it appeals to anyone to try, I definitely recommend it because it's like certain Personality, it's very well suited to. And other people will be like, ugh, I cannot stand that idea. You know, But I think it really has worked for me. And in terms of why not? I don't know, it was just nut. Why not? Why not? Yeah.

How much editing do you do as you go? You write a full first draft without any evidence and then go back to revise or how does that work?

I think it's a mix. But often if I'm writing, I'm kind of writing along. I will try and just write forward and not think. I'll just try and get myself away from it as much as possible. But then it's that next day or even that next hour, the next week, and then I'll be reading through and not trying to read through with a kind of scalpel like mind, but just to read through, to feel like, am I interested as a reader? You know, no, this line is really boring or this whole piece is incredibly not working or oh, yeah, I kind of forgot what's about to happen. And this is interesting, you know, to sort of willfully try to forget. So then I can look at it that way.

Yeah.

So your story you read at some.

Place, it's very idea driven. Do you ever have characters like rebel when you're trying to write that way? And if so, how do you deal with it?

And because you said it was event driven. Was that the word I couldn't. Event driven? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the characters. Yeah. Basically it feels like there's an idea in terms of those words, but there is a character who is there going through it, and they kind of arrive together. I think when the characters rebel, you kind of have to listen to them a little bit, which is hard because you may have an idea of where you want to take them. But usually I find that the writing happens wherever it's leaning and you have to kind of lean into it. And that part of the pain is that that idea in your mind is not going to happen. It's just like it's this thing over here, but that there's great stuff to happen if you follow that leaning. Yeah, yeah. How do you feel about writing that.

You did when you were younger?

Do you not like it anymore or like, is there a progression? Most likely you're working on crisis. Younger, meaning like an earlier book or like 7 years old or 15 and now. Okay, 18 and now. I mean, it's mostly. I mean, in general, I feel like the stuff that I'm working on now is the stuff I feel most connected to because it's what I want to be working on now. So that does feel true. But occasionally, like in interviews, writers will sort of dis the earlier book. And I find that really annoying because hopefully you're doing the best you can at a given time and it's a genuine effort of some kind. So I feel like, yeah, I feel basically appreciative. I mean, there's something about adolescent writing that I have a little cringing factor for. But at the same time, you think of oneself as an adolescent. It's just like that. You sort of feel loving to yourself and a little pain, a little embarrassment. So. So there's some of that. But, yeah, mostly I think the stuff that's hardest to look at is the stuff that feels really held in because it just feels like, why couldn't I just try stuff out? It feels really conservative in its choices, and that feels like the most painful to look at. Yeah. Another question. What is a good day for you to. What's a good day in terms of writing or just. So a good day in terms of writing means I'm just not looking at the clock and I'm just engaged with it. And maybe there's something that surprised me. I think that's why I stay doing it is the sense of surprise either, you know, painful or exciting. Surprise is satisfying, so. And the feeling that maybe there was some momentum. I guess that's a good thing too. Yeah.

Do you prefer short stories to novels? Obviously most of your writing is short stories as opposed to novel stories.

As to why, I mean, I actually like both. I had a novel that I was working on that I had to put aside because it just wasn't working. So I'm working on another one that's feeling much better. But I think short stories feel like I understand the shape a little better. I just like to, you know, I'm more concise in terms of the way that I think, or something like that. So I don't know how to expand as easily. But I like that about novels because it sort of stretches the harder spot. So, yeah, I mean, I like storytelling. I like the idea of a short story. You know, short stories get a kind of bad rap that people don't like short stories, blah, blah, blah. But everyone likes to sit around and be told a story or hear a story. I mean, that's just it in the DNA. So I like that about stories, or I like to try to tell a story that would have that feeling, which is like, why I like this chair. It's A storytelling kind of chair. Do you find it more difficult to write novels than stories? For me, I think it's more difficult because you have to be a lot more patient with the process. But it's kind of the same thing. It's just the novel. It feels like it takes longer to figure out what. Which, like, idea or germ or thread, has the length of a novel in it. But a short story, I can have an idea, and it can be one page and it's a short story, or it can be 30 pages. So it just. There's more variety in terms of options. Yeah. How do you know? Okay, this is perfect. I'm done. I don't always know, but I think I'll know. Oh, I'm excited to. This will be the feeling. The feeling will be, I'm excited for someone else to read this and give me feedback. Sometimes I'll have the feeling like, maybe someone can help me. And that is usually not as good a position because then they don't know what to do. Like, I want them to sort of write it for me, but if I feel like, oh, something happened here, and I'm excited to read it to someone or give it to someone to read and get feedback, then I know that it's nearly ready. And, yeah, that's usually the good cue, but never perfect. Just. Yeah.

I have friends that participate in this National Novel Writing Month thing.

Yeah. Good thing.

For people that don't know, it's like you write 50,000 words in a month. Do you think that's a good idea or bad?

So this is NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month, and it's November or October. I think it's great. I mean, the main thing I feel about writing is that we put it on a pedestal and we make it too precious, and it becomes not fun, and it's. And then it becomes something kind of impenetrable, and people start to feel that about reading. You know, the whole thing just becomes charged up with all this weight. And I feel like you can write. You can enjoy writing about something that's very painful, and that somehow feels important to me, too. And I think NaNoWriMo just encourages to just try it and do it, and then Maybe out of 50,000 words, you end up with 2,000 you want to keep, but. But that's 2,000 more than you had October 31st. So, yeah, I think kind of games are helpful with writing as a jumpstart, and it feels like there's a sort of playful mentality with it. Yeah.

What kind of editorial feedback do you get from your publisher? Do you rewrite based on that? And what's the process like?

So I get an editor who will give me. I mean, basically I have a few friends that I'll give something to and they'll give me feedback. And then I'll also have an editor and an agent. My agent will read stuff and give a little feedback, too. And my editor will give kind of structural feedback often. And then I'll try to incorporate that. And I don't take all of it. I mean, I'll sort of take what feels like it fits with my sense of it. But he generally has good thoughts. But I don't think there's an expectation that I'm going to take it all and transform it. It's sort of more like something's off over here. Maybe you need to shift around. He's not super directive because. Which I actually like, you know, specific, but not like, you must. Chapter four. Must be chapter seven. Yeah. I went to graduate school and it was just a really good group and a really good teacher. So I know a lot of people that went through an MFA and felt squashed by it or felt little bit, just that there was a general style, an MFA style. And I didn't feel that at all. And I felt really encouraged to write the weirder stories. I would kind of turn in a story that I thought would get nixed and they would be encouraging. And so that was great. It was a really good time for me. But it just felt like there was a lot of excitement. And I was in a program that was in transition. So that also was kind of good in a way, because it was. It just felt like there was a lot of room for the students to, you know, take our stance or whatever. Yeah.

Ideally, what would you like readers to.

Take away from their stories? Ideally, what would I like readers to take away from my stories? I guess I would like them to take away a feeling that is not necessarily clear in a certain way. Like, I like the idea that you might feel moved, but you might not know why. In some ways, that interests me a lot. Yeah. And then maybe later you would know why, or maybe you wouldn't, but that something would have affected you. Yeah. That actually quite related.

My question. Is there any, like, gender express.

It was.

I mean, and that's where my editor came in. Because I gave maybe about four other stories that he said, no, let's pull those. Because he felt like there was something in the. I guess the way the magic was showing up in different stories. That had a similar feel in terms of tone. So in some ways that was part of the selection process or. And the very loose structure as I was starting with the meaner stories and ending with the nicer stories. So it was the movement towards hope, breaking hope in the middle somewhere, you know. But that was a little arbitrary. Like, I don't expect that to be particularly clear to a reader. It was just my way of organizing. But in terms of theme, I'm not. I don't think that much about theme when I'm writing, but I think. So certain things do resurface a lot about connections and missed connections and a lot about. I mean, it's hard for me to even articulate this is what other people say. So I think they show up again. I think writers tend to have preoccupations that show up repeatedly to. Like there's those two Woody Allen movies, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point, which are really similar, but then they kind of end a little bit differently. But there's a sort of, you know, does the person get away with murder? Thing and want to. It's just interesting to see that in him. About working the same theme but then letting the story end a little differently. Raymond Carver rewrote one of his own stories, the Bath and A Small Good Thing, so that he could kind of expand it. So I think whatever themes they are, even if I can't articulate them, just keep coming back. Yeah.

What leads you to pick the title of your book based on your sprint? I'm always curious how. I mean, in a music album, DJs.

Pick the most catchy tune.

How do you pick which story?

Well, it's actually not one of the stories, which is. It was like an overarching thing and it was. My first book's called the Girl in the Flammable Skirt. And that title I had before I even wrote the book. I just knew I wanted to title a book that. So that was really helpful. And it's been much harder since. So this one was more. Forget how I was thinking of different ones. But then I was really liking the word willful. And I was thinking. Or I was liking creatures, something creatures. And I went through about 9 million adjectives. And then willful seemed like a good match. And it does kind of fit all the stories that there are characters that are not human, that are creatures. There's a kid with a head that's an iron, or there's some babies made up potatoes and, you know, so there's some things that fit the creature part. And there is something about both the good and bad side of willfulness that plays out. So it was more thinking of that, and I wanted a shorter title because I'd had two longer titles, so. Yeah. Any significance to naming a map character Steve? No. Yeah. It's funny that he's named Steve. I kind of forget that he's named Steve. But I wanted a name that was like a. I have a little trouble with naming because I like mythic languages. Man, woman, boy, girl, you know? So Steve felt to me like a name that's common enough that it would. Yeah. Not stand out in a certain way. But it does stand out. Can't really help it. All right. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to read here.