Interview 2

So I wanted to restart our interview from earlier. This time with a different question, however.

What's that?

Well I was reading some of your old work and I was thinking about plot. When you're writing , how important would you say plot is for you?

Yes the famous plot thing. I've written about it before. Many times. I don't really believe in plot. Or, at least, I don't believe in it, like it seems many people do. So many people have this idea of storytellers, and it's like they think we wait for these fully fleshed out ideas to come to us. I myself thought this too, before I ever wrote, when I was a teenager. The truth is its not that way. A story is , in my opinion, usually gradually revealed to people.

So you, like now with this story you're writing of the girl Franny, you have no idea how it ends for her.

None at all. I don't even know if there'll be an “ending”. I generally just keep writing until I find I lose interest with a character. To me this is the natural way of things. Honestly it sounds crazy, but ...to me, take a story like the real one I just lived with Becki. Well, let's imagine I never talk to her again, and let's imagine too, that becki has no social media (which she doesn't). The last detail I have of beckis story is that she was a struggling single mother of two with a troubled drug addict for a baby's father, and she was living at her parents house. She was in her 20s. If I never talk to her again, her story, for me, that's the literal close of it.

Unless, maybe, you know, 60 years from now you read her obituary or something.

Right, but maybe I'll be dead myself tonight. You get me? So I never go further with her story. Or maybe I live another 10 years and then I die, but she never contacts me again, to say sorry. For me, she'll always still be that struggling girl in her 20s, with very young kids. I'll know she's going on, and that she's aging, but since I won't know exactly how, it'll all just be an imagining. Well, that's how I think literature should be. But instead we all obsess over tying up ends. No one ever just leaves characters off, which is weird, cause in real life, that's literally all it is. Literally all it is.

Do you have any ideas for the Franny story , where it could go? Do you brainstorm?

A little. Not really. What I love is when details randomly pop out about characters, especially in conversations in the book. For example, this morning I'm typing it ,, and I have this scene now where Franny has cut contact with the still unnamed first person lead. And the lead is talking to the boyfriend Qualeek about Franny, and he randomly drops this major biographical detail about her, that neither I nor the lead knew.

What was it?

That Franny actually had an older sister, that they called “Melody”, cus she sang. Qualeek says she got locked up, however. A life sentence. And all of this was never at all said by Franny herself, particualely not to the lead.

So Qualeek could be lying.

Yes, or Franny could be. And that's what I love. I love how even as the writer I actually got no idea of the truth. I think people watch shows and think writers know all the details. We don't know either. I literally have no idea.

What did the sister do to go to prison?

Qualeek wouldn't say actually. He said not to bring it up, ever, should Franny return.

Wow. Which makes it seem all the more suspicious. Tell me, do you think you enjoy writing fiction based in the present time like this, or do you more like that fantasy and sci FI it seems you sometimes do?

Really hard to say. I have such an admiration for fantasy and I love writing it but sometimes I feel silly doing it and I just wanna come back to our own time. The problem with our own time though is...I gotta have characters who are limited just like me, by reality, by present day. Like, with the Franny story, the way it's been set up now, I can't really just suddenly decide she gets rich, stops working at hooters, and suddenly moves to France.

Well...I mean it does happen in reaity.

It does but it'd be preposterous. I think she might be stripping though. :laughs: like as a side gig.

Really?

Ya. Becki used to talk about stripping though she never did it. I knew some girls who stripped from the neighborhood here. They made lots of money. I used to think it was fascinating.

Well let me ask you something else. So far, the whole Franny story is written from the view of this unnamed lead girl. The suburban type girl. Would you start a new chapter now from Frannys view, whether first or third person?

That's a great question and very very tricky for me. I think it throws readers off and sometimes I think it seems cheap to suddenly change perspectives but I also think it might be an interesting way to tell a story. I might do it but it might be weird to see Franny from the lens of a “cold” author rather than this first person girl who has actually met her. I've found with modern characters in our own time, I have trouble describing them in third person. I don't know why. It's like, I can't describe some young character of the year 2018 in third person...it all sounds too serious. A fisherman from 1867 seems to make sense in third person. “ He looked out to the sea. A big ship was sailing on the horizon. The sun was about to set. In the woods he could hear screams.” But a young girl just seems weird.

Maybe try it. It could keep the story alive. Do you…:laughs: will anyone get killed?

I was thinking that the unnamed lead could be killed, actually. The one with the house to herself. Or she could be humiliated into committing suicide. There is a plot detail now supporting this: She has made sex videos with Qualeek that she's deeply ashamed of making..,,

If she killed herself, third person perspective has to take over.

Indeed. But it can seem so so cheap. I don't know. It starts to seem like a different story.

That's another thing I wanted to ask: How often is it the case that you have a few stories going at once?

Oh it's absolutely the norm. I don't know if it's good advice for a writer but for me I love it. When I first began, I was very adamant, about one project at a time. Then I became more focused on short stories so I began bouncing around. At this point, I'm writing in Ancient Rome for an hour in the morning, then I switch to a story like Frannys in the modern day. I'll literally write two stories in complete contrast with one another, one after the other.

What do you mean?

Like, I'll write a story about an interracial love, like Franny, and then the next one I'll write a Nazi killing a black guy. Because I'm like, I'm almost just, you know, to me they're just different stories. Do I enjoy Frannys more? Do I sympathize with her more? Absolutely. But I'm not gonna, like, pretend Nazis don't exist, either. I'll write them. They have a story. Skinheads were a major part of my youths consciousness, actually.

You knew skinheads?

Oh yea. A number of them. And on the internet they've been all over for years. They're shits-- but they have a tale all the same.

I think the problem would be if you portrayed thrm as hero.

Right. But what does that even mean? If I portrayed them as a hero? For example, if I wrote a story about a Nazi guy in prison, who kills a black guy and then escapes, and goes to South America...did I make him a hero? No I just let his story escape prison. Is that heroic? It's up to the reader. The point is it's a story. For example, I once said to my friend, a soldier who really doesn't like gays, I asked him “if I wrote a story about some gay kid, who changed into a straight, ‘masculine’ type man, after his father who hated him for being gay died, what would you think?” He said he'd love it. “They should make that.”

That would probably be seen as a controversial film, pressuring gays to be straight.

Right. But it's still a story is my point. Like, that has probably happened, where someone ages out of being gay, especially flamboyantly gay. So this guy was gay during his 20s, and his father was, say, a gulf war veteran, who hated him for it. Then the father drops dead . Maybe someone beats him to death. Maybe they kill him. Maybe he hangs himself cause he's so profoundly ashamed that he created a queer son. And the gay 26 year old is looking at the casket of this fsther he hated and sudfenly he decides, I wanna be straight, I wanna be the man he wanted me to be. Hey, it's a fuvking story. You don't have to fucking do it just cause the story exists. It's just one story. One assholes decision.

Your soldier friend liked it.

He did, and I told him, PC culture probably wouldn't. Yet I also said to him, afterwards, I said, if you want to see that story, then you gotta accept another story, where the reverse happens. You gotta let them all breathe. You gotta have a story where a football player whose oh so masculine sudfenly decides  to become a trans, a flamboyant drag queen. I'm just saying, I think every story has to be broadcast, why not? And not every lead character has to be a hero. I don't get the hero stuff. Like, Rose in Titanic, she wasn't a hero to me. She was just someone I was watching! When I watch stories or read them, I'm not looking for heroes. I'm looking for atmosphere. I'm looking to understand some particular event in time. To see through different eyes. That's all. Seeing thru different eyes is all I care about. Hence, I wanna see through the white girl who makes interracial babies eyes, and then the violent Nazis, all at once.

You just wanna see it all.

Exactly. I think that's what good tale tellers should do. I mean, JRR Tolkien wrote from the eyes of elves, dwarves, hobbits, men, evil dark lords, everyone. I can't just pretend only hot white chicks with hot black boyfriends exist!

Well...you could….

I guess. And sometimes I do. But then I rememer I gotta make tragedies. Hugr tragedies.

(End)