Have you always known that you would be a writer? How did you get your start?
I always had a fondness for language, for story. I think my first public outing was in second grade when I wrote a school play, a commissioned piece on the perils of tooth decay. It opened and closed on the same day. I guess I started more or less writing for a living in 2000 or so, when I published my first real magazine piece, a story for the Washington Post magazine in which I went and got a job in a traveling carnival.
Where do you find your inspiration?
From all over, I guess. Occasionally, I’ll come across an anecdote, steal it wholesale and turn it into fiction. Sometimes the character comes first, or the setting or a plot turn. Itdoesn’t often happen the same way twice.
I’ve read that you work at two desks. Why is that, and how does it shape your writing process?
The two-desk thing was just a strategy for dodging the internet. I had an ethernet cable at the desk I used for nonfiction, while the fiction desk was internet-free. Fiction, for me, calls for a much deeper sort of concentration, a kind of focus easily dispelled by email and Wikipedia.
You’ve had work published in newspapers and magazines. Is there a different kind of thrill that comes with releasing a book of your own?
Oh, sure. Mainly, it’s satisfying to publish work that benefits from years of tooling and reworking, rather than the scant months one generally gets to work on a magazine piece.
We have a great number of aspiring writers at Mount Holyoke. Do you have any advice for young writers hoping to be published?
Don’t adore your work too much. Destroy it heartlessly, revise generously. Don’t let it go until you’re sure every word is at home.
None of the stories in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned end on a positive note. Was it your intention from the very start to tell stories without positive resolutions?
Oh, I think most of them end reasonably amiably. Dark things happen in the tales, but rarely do I leave characters in places of lasting desolation. To my own mind, everybody pretty much winds up being okay.
All of your main characters seem to have a personal grievance. They seem to be the down-on-their-luck types. How did you decide to work with these characters? Do you think that these characters make for a more realistic story?
I don’t think they’re so down on their luck. I’ve got one redneck carpenter, but I’ve also got real estatedevelopers, attorneys, petit businessfolk, some Vikings who I think are doing all right for themselves. But it’s true that we find them at low points. Life’s low points have a lot of potential narrative energy. A question mark immediately looms over the tale: will things get worse, or will they improve? For me, it’s a fertile place to start a story.
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