Q What interests you about fiction to pursue it at the level that you're pursuing it?
Is that a trick question?
Q You know what I'm saying.
There's mystery in its process. It's expression in a very pure form. A way to make sense of what I see.
Q For example?
For example, most of us don't move very far up or down from where we start. I don't know if it's an obsession, but I notice there's a strong myth that says the opposite. It's interesting to me.
Q Do you consider yourself an orderly, organized writer?
So far my process is the opposite of organized. Aside from work, I tend to like order in almost every other aspect of my life. For me, the process of writing is really chaotic and indulgent and selfish. The actual space where I write tends to be messy. Sometimes, writing feels a bit like I’m letting go of everything that's actually more important. Finishing my novel was like being on an all-night bender and then thinking, “What the...? What did I just do?” and pouring myself another drink.
Q What are your impetuses for your writing?
Impetuses? I like saying impetuses. Impetuses for writing, for me, are simply strange things I happen to notice in everyday life, stuff I read about, stuff my wife says -- situations that strike me as compelling, anecdotes I’d heard, images, words, songs. You know. There's nothing special about my impetuses.
Q Where did you learn your craft?
In the third grade. Trial and error. I was never very good at writing short stories and figured I could just skip 'em and try a novel, which I did. My first novel didn't know whether it wanted to be a coming of age memoir, action adventure or mystery. The real writing leap happened after I started figuring out how to read my own work in order to make it better. Obviously, it's a continuum. I have tons to learn. On the other hand, instinct is important and going with my gut. For All in a Cup, I had a basic premise: two characters who read each other all wrong. For scenes, I have some basic ideas -- a character they can learn from, or an image, or a situation that sounds interesting -- and then I feel my way around until I find the edges. I've heard writers say it's like going into a dark room... you stumble around until you find the walls and then inch your way to the light switch. With a novel, it’s more like you’re inside a dark cavernous, vacant old lumber mill, like the one down the hill from where I live.
Q Does music play a role in your writing?
Great question to ask someone who's musically illiterate. I tend to listen to sad, melancholy music, or what some people might call suicide music, like Mazzy Star, Liz Durrett, Camera Obscura, Eddie Vedder, Laura Veirs, Yo La Tengo, Julie Doiron, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Finches. I'm also a sucker for sitar and harmonica and organ. It's odd I know, but I find it very inspiring, calming, poignant, beautiful. It slows time for me. It probably has some effect on the tone of my writing. I'm fascinated and intimidated by song writing, which is essentially poetry with instruments, beat and a good voice. The art and creation of it is inspiring to think about.
Q Do you consider yourself a fast or slow writer?
I write in slow motion. It's always the same struggle to get a good paragraph down on a page, and deal with the same self-doubts and hair pulling over and over. What's worse is when I read good fiction and say to myself, "What the hell am I doing? I can't touch this." It happens all the time to me. I often feel like I'm riding a trike while others are whizzing past on a motorcycle.
Q What's the hardest part about writing a novel?
All of it. Being smart enough to create people from words and experiences. And chronology and having conflict in the right spots. While in the thick of it, creating a web of characters and a plausible compelling series of scenes, my timing can slip, my structure gets disjointed. Meantime, I might get sidetracked by an emotion that I don't know how to articulate. It's hard to even get a character moving from Point A to Point B with verbs that are new and interesting while keeping some sort of tension. And then there are the transitions. There's not a lot of luck in writing a long body of work. Maybe that's why I like it so much. You can't cheat.
Q What were you like in college?
Same as I am now: a by-stander more or less. I remember reading the same socialist and Marxist pamphlets as everyone else during the Reagan era. I wasn't the type to go to Nicaragua to help out the Sandinistas, but I was definitely cheering them on, telling them good job, go for it, you rock. I was drinking beer and saying: "I know these injustices keep coming up, but -- hey -- my dad has season tickets to the Seahawks."
Q Who are the great American writers of your generation?
The ones my age that come to mind are Jonathan Lethem, Joanna Hershon and Jonathan Franzen. I suppose. But Ursela Hegi, Don DeLillo, Oscar Hijeulos, curmudgeon Philip Roth are all masters of our time. At least those are the first ones that come to mind. There's a lot of good authors. And there's a bazillion writers with far greater chops than me.
Q Just when you think the story is about to make some sort of statement, it takes a turn or backs off. Is that intentional?
I have a fear of being preachy or didactic. Even though there are so many things wrong in the world, I knew I needed to explore relationships and delve into what motivates us, what complicates us, what crushes and saves us. It means more. Certainly, there are scenes in CUP that are important to me, but I didn't write it in order to straighten out some sort of morality. Writing is not so much cathartic as it is creative.
Q There’s subtext about class in the story, or at least subtleties about what people typically do with their money.
I can't be the only one who walks around downtown and sees the gulf between people who look like they’ll never have to worry about money and people who look like they’re barely getting by. If you don't see it, you're either ignoring it or you're not really getting out much. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I wanted to put those observations into full view. Those aspects about class will always be part of my fiction.
Q You set up the story with a simple fender-bender, where most people would go their own way, end of story. In this case, Tim and Sarah seem to dig their heels in, letting their distrust get in the way.
I isolated the bigotry to cars and clothes, I suppose. People react in funny ways under stress. Add threats to finances and personal property, and you have potential for everyday people doing weird things. I’ve always been fascinated by how quickly people make judgments based on appearances. My challenge for ALL IN A CUP was to get two people who wouldn’t like each other at the beginning, but stay connected throughout the story. In the end, I found that the threads of civility are what kept them tethered; they both had it without understanding it. Sometimes civility is all we have, and we wonder if that’s enough.
Q Sarah isn’t really a model personality for good behavior, is she?
My early drafts had Sarah far less likable than how she ended up. I wasn’t being fair. My biases got in the way. She reminded me that even the pretty ones who look like they have everything figured out aren’t immune from having to face and overcome horrible issues. Sarah’s cancer hits her through no fault of her own. It’s a genuinely sad situation.
Q Have you ever met anyone like Tim?
No, but we’d be great friends if I had, despite his analytical and morose nature. He has this incredible pool of wealth that gives him a lot of freedom to ask what-ifs and live out all kinds of choices, which turn out to be non-choices. Somehow, he’s encumbered even though he’s trying so desperately not to be. He’s got guilt, grief, demons and so on. It’s the baggage that matters, not the wealth. Tim’s very easy to like because he chooses to emulate a life without any creature comforts. And he’s the perfect balance for Sarah, whether she realizes it or not. Everywhere you look, the world is filled with examples of balance or forces that even each other out, and here Tim and Sarah do the same for each other.
Q What's a good writer quote you can give me?
Henry James ... what he said on his deathbed: "Ah, here it comes, the big thing." I think it's funny. And Jonathan Lethem said, "It seems to me John Quincy Adams gives you everything John Adams gives you with a little something extra in the way of Quincy."
