Beyond the Classroom: A Conversation Between Adrian Shirk and Raquel F. Ponce
Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories from the Byways of American Religion (Counterpoint) and other works, including her "Notes on Memoir," which appears in this volume of Clockhouse. She teaches in the BFA Creative Writing Program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Raquel F. Ponce is a writer and radio producer based in Pittsburgh, and Shirk’s former student. Ponce received her BFA in Creative Writing in 2017. She is the author of the story “The Conquistador,” which appears in this issue of Clockhouse. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Adrian Shirk's Introduction
Raquel Ponce was a student of mine at Pratt Institute. She completed her thesis manuscript Miami Moscas under my advisement (and with her incredibly generous and brilliant workshop peers), over the course of the 2016 – 2017 school year. I was twenty-seven and twenty-eight-years-old through the duration of that time, which I’m reflecting on now that Raquel is very nearly closing that gap. Miami Moscas was, from the outset, this excellently textured, hybrid manuscript—at once a collection of short stories, an operatic ring cycle, and a novella. It chronicles the life and times of a Peruvian immigrant family as they make their way in early-2000s Miami, following their escape from the violent hold of the Shining Path movement in their home country. The family are Seventh-day Adventist, and so bring to the page the particularity of that theology, chiefly, a belief in Millenarianism—that the end is nigh.
Each story in Miami Moscas adopts a different character perspective—the mother’s, the father’s, the brother’s, the little sister’s. Further, the stories take on different styles, lengths, narrative modes, and often move through dramatically different time periods, allowing for a multi-dimensional, dialogic story to unfold about family, identity and diaspora that insists on the readers’ intimacy with everyone involved.
When I first read Raquel’s work—back in that fall 2016 classroom, as we all watched in slow-motion horror the election of the 45th president of the United States—I immediately recognized her incredible sense of pacing and timing, a real natural instinct about where a story begins, about how to weight a story’s attention in ways so that the tension is always coming from more than one place, and produces results and reactions that are often as unexpected, mysterious and shocking to the readers, as they are for the characters. I think all of these things are especially present in “The Conquistador,” where we see the patriarch, Arturo, as macho as he is, in spite of himself, incredibly vulnerable.
Adrian Shirk: I’m so excited that one of your stories is appearing in this issue of Clockhouse. Can you tell us a little bit about Miami Moscas, the work-in-progress that it’s taken from?
Raquel F. Ponce: So, Miami Moscas is set in three main locations: Peru; San Jose, California; and, of course, Miami. The story itself jumps back and forth through time, as early as 1987 and as far in the future as the 2020s. I knew I wanted the family’s journey to somewhat mirror my own, but I also wanted to add on to it. Isn’t that what fiction is for? My characters start off poor, searching for that American Dream, which doesn’t really exist anymore. They make it to the middle class, but the fight to get there changes their relationships with one another. [The project] started as a story about a mother, who serves as the glue for her family. It’s about the mother, but told through the children and, at times, the husband. The family are Seventh-Day Adventists who flee Peru in the ‘90s because of terrorism, and start a new life in America.
After I graduated from Pratt, [the stories] grew into a larger story about religion versus supernatural experience, machismo, the immigrant life and what that does to a family. There is a lot more I’m discovering about it as I go. I’m researching more into Peru, talking to family members and using these experiences to help shape the story.
AS: Do you feel like it will still function more like a sequence of stories, or do you think it will ultimately read more fluidly like a novel or a novella?
RP: That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Because some pieces can stand alone, but others sort of float. And I like that. I like having some breathers from intense, long stories.
AS: I like that, too. And it’s murky, generally, for me at least, about what constitutes a story versus a chapter versus some other form. Like, where does one begin and the other end? In fact, I can think of lots of books I love that don’t ever resolve those questions, like Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, which we read together when you were my student!
RP: Yeah, I think if I tried to write the “standard” novel way I wouldn’t get anywhere. I remember when I was a kid and I borrowed my dad’s laptop because I wanted to write a story, I think it was about fairies. But I tried to write it “like a grown up,” like all of the books I read at the time, and I got so frustrated that I only wrote four words, and they were “Once Upon a Time.” Yeah, I learned my lesson. I’m definitely more chill about writing now.
AS: God, yes—I still have experiences like that now, I mean, not about fairies and “Once Upon a Time,” but I do find when I go into a writing project with a very strict idea of what it should be, or who I am as a writer, I literally cannot proceed. And then there’s a process I still have to go through every time which is, like, continually finding my way back to myself, or finding my way back to the true spirit of the work.
RP: I think that’s where I get stuck the most as a writer. Especially after graduating. I kept thinking about writing like Carrie Bradshaw.
AS: [Laughs]
RP: It did not get me anywhere.
AS: I’m often thinking of Carrie Bradshaw, too, like--
RP: “I couldn't help but wonder . . . ”
AS: [Laughs] Right, you think: why can’t I just sit here with this cigarette, looking out my big beautiful bay window, pen in mouth, while a perfect line, a perfect a summation, just pours out of me!
RP: Yes! Half of writing is just me spacing out.
AS: That’s real, though. Spacing out is part of writing—maybe it even is writing.
RP: I’ll stare at the same smudge on my laptop for ten minutes.
AS: That’s just money in the bank, honestly.
RP: Oh, definitely. I actually like spacing out. My boyfriend gets confused sometimes because he thinks I look “depressed,” but really I’m just thinking of hypothetical situations, which then turn into a story or scene. I’m like, “Babe, it’s okay. I’m not sad. If I was sad, I’d be crying.” Then again, crying is part of writing some times. I don't know if you remember this, but there were a couple of times I cried writing a scene or story during senior year--
AS: Oh, I remember, for sure.
RP: I’m a very emotional person. It’s funny now that I think of it. Crying helped me write. A lot of what the family goes through are heightened versions of my own history so it helps to connect with that part of myself, of my history. Does that make sense?
AS: Absolutely. Yes, I don’t mean to sound too woo woo here, but I think if the process of making work brings you into that deep place—that feels sort of mysterious and overwhelming and painful and indescribable—then you’re doing it right. I really think that if you feel like you understand your own work too well, like, if you feel two steps ahead of it, you’re probably missing something. The work should always be two steps ahead of you, the author. The work should be smarter than you in a way, taking you on a weird journey.
RP: Yes! I used to think if I wasn’t ahead of my story or had it completely planned out then I would fail, or my writing wouldn't go
anywhere. But I’ve tried that. I got overwhelmed easily because I tried to control the story. She’s a wild beast and I’m learning to let her live.
AS: I wanted to circle back to this, partly because it’s an area of personal interest: Can you give an example of some research or research-like conversations you’ve had with family members sometime in the last year, and describe the way it entered into the expansion of Miami Moscas?
RP: So, a lot of my questions were answered after my favorite Abuelito passed away summer of 2017, and then my Abuelita on my dad’s side passed in 2018. I learned about how my Abuelito and Abuelita (mom’s side) met. How they converted to Adventism, and their relationship. They probably are the only example of a strong relationship in my family. I learned he was the mayor of my mom’s hometown, Tingo Maria, during the height of Sendero Luminoso. He was a man of God, and though I don’t consider myself an Adventist anymore, I truly felt my Abuelito had some angels protecting him. My Abuelita, from my dad’s side, lived to be 97. She’s the protagonist and antagonist. She could make any grown man, woman, or dog cry. But that’s the culture of southern Peru. The people who live high up in the Andes. They’re called serranos and serranas. Her stepmother physically abused her. She made her work hard and long hours in the fields. It sort of sounded like the evil step-mother from Cinderella, expect the Peru version. Instead of a pumpkin they had llamas.
AS: Wow—it’s so wild how much stuff unearths within families when people pass away. Is all or any of this material entering in your work right now? Did a new character show up or start to take clearer shape?
RP: Right, so this might be messed up, but before my Abuelita died, I had started a story about her death. Honestly, she was really old and we all loved her, but it was still on everyone’s mind. She was the matriarch. Even in her old age, no one fucked with her. But I couldn’t finish the story. I kept changing everything. Only after her death did I really understand her impact on all of us. She was a constant in my life. We all sought her approval and didn’t even realize it. So I changed that story. It’s somewhat of a fantasy now. Peru is a very supernatural place, especially the Amazon, but my family is so religious. We sort of missed out on that part of Peru’s history.
AS: You mean the way that colonial Christianity, as a general historical force, tried to erase the folk or indigenous spirituality of the region?
RP: Yes. So, my mom is much more free and open to that history. She works with and talks with many indigenous people because she’s deep in the rainforest. It’s two hours out of Pucallpa, one of the main cities in the Ucayali region. Her closest friend is from that area. He taught me a lot about the land. He can name almost every single plant that grows in the rainforest. He is so in tune with the land and is really just a wise and calm person. He’s the one who taught my mom and I about the good and bad spirits. He knows the real shamans, not the Viceland versions. That’s the difference between Lima and Pucallpa. Lima is city and heavily focused on religion. Most are Catholic.
AS: Would it be too trite to ask you what you feel like is next on the horizon, in terms of writing, whether this project or another? Or just in general?
RP: How dare you! [Laughs]. I’ve never been too confident in myself and my writing. Even after Pratt. I left Brooklyn thinking Brooklyn was the reason I couldn’t write. I thought I was too distracted or lost, and then I moved to Pittsburgh and my mentality didn’t change. I worked eight hours a day in a boring office, most of the day wasted away on Netflix, and it took me a few months into 2018 to wake myself up. I had a bunch of ideas, but was too scared to write them down. Now I tell myself “fuck it” and write down everything. I have another story I’m so close to finishing. I’ve been working on the revision for a couple of months. I still have those days where I can’t even look at my laptop because I think what I wrote is trash, but it’s not as intense anymore. I want to finish Miami Moscas. It’s constantly on my mind. I dream about it.
AS: Yes, all of that is so real. Writing and making is very slow, or just long. I had this experience this winter actually where I was working on, well, basically, I had been “working on a book about American utopian communities” for the last year. That’s what I’d say. And it was true, in that I was doing a lot of reading, messy research, visiting communities, thinking about it, staring at the smudge on my computer thinking about utopianianism, trying to think about how my own life over the next few years might be able to become a little more communal, dreaming with friends, all of these things. And then meanwhile I was writing all of these notes, right? Like, “just notes.”
RP: [Laughs]
AS: I had, like, 120 individual documents of what I considered “just notes,” and the documents were titled things like, “Utopia_Nashville,” “Utopia_Bruderhof,” “Utopia_Womanhouse,” etc, etc.
RP: Oh my god. I feel that. Also, “messy research” [Laughs].
AS: Yeah, and each of these documents contained tons of random bits of writing, little narratives, thoughts, experiences, descriptions of site visits I was taking, travelogues, rants, passages from books, bits of interview, bits from letters and emails, etc, etc.
RP: I have random bookmarks and documents of, like, snippets of scenes or lines I didn’t use because it didn’t fit, but I still saved because maybe I’ll use it.
AS: Right, right! And I kept thinking, alright, any day now, one or more of these things is going to start to coalesce into something, it’s going to start to look like an essay or a chapter or something. It’s going to finally build. But instead I just kept making more and more of these documents, “Utopia_Caliban and the Witch,” “Utopia_North American Phalanx,” “Utopia_Jenny Lewis,” “Utopia_Soul City,” on and on. And then two things happened: a friend of mine was like, just print out all the goddamn documents and look at them all together.
RP: That’s a good friend.
AS: So I did, and I worked over it, and annotated it, and shuffled it around and things started to sort of connect, and I could see how things fit, or a kind of structure emerged, whatever—but I still couldn’t see the book I thought I was trying to write. And THEN--
RP: Oh my god, this is really taking me back to class, the way you’re talking--
AS: This winter break I was working through that stack of printed out writing, and I was writing new stuff, new stuff that just felt like junky sketchy notes, and I was reading, and I was stitching some stuff together and suddenly I thought, “Oh, shit, this is my book.” All of this stuff, all of these little random things that I keep thinking are the precursor or the thing that is eventually going to make way for the “real” book, it is the book, all this writing in the Utopia folder. This is what I have to work with.
RP: [Laughs]
AS: And so it felt like I went from having no manuscript to having 150 pages of writing overnight. Sort of. Basically what it did was make it possible to look at all of that stuff and see it as legitimate writing, the actual material I have to work with, and not just the lead-up or the sketchbook, but actually the stuff itself—and that the thing I was writing was not going to be a pop-nonfiction book in the conventional sense because I am not that kind of writer.
RP: I think that’s the fun part of writing.
AS: Right? I had to face myself: I write in a very weird, circuitous way, and it’s pretty messy, but kind of cool if, and only if, I really meet it where it’s at.
RP: Yes, because writing the story itself is its own journey. Yikes. I feel like I stole that from a movie.
AS: But it’s true. That may be a movie line, but it’s true.
RP: Talking about writing reminds me of why I love writing. When I’m actually writing, I’ll have a nice flow for a bit, but then have to constantly argue with myself about whether I need that one word or not.
AS: Yes, the joy of actually being in the act of writing is so, so finite.
RP: Again, it’s not Carrie Bradshaw.
AS: Carrie Bradshaw was alone in that goddamn room, too. There was no one around!
RP: Her apartment!
AS: Her beautiful apartment! Supported by a weekly newspaper column.
RP: I can’t. Her incredible apartment. With a perfect kitchen.
AS: And the walk-in closet that was also an elegant hallway to her bathroom.
RP: I will never forgive the Sex in the City creator for those unrealistic expectations.
AS: Yes, it’s cruel. You know, you never see her sitting around talking about writing or composition, or thinking about how to make stuff, or agonizing over the writing itself.
RP: I know. But I’ll still watch the show.
AS: Yeah. Emily Nussbaum has an excellent essay on why she loves Sex and the City in spite of it all, including all of that. You should read it.
RP: I will!
AS: But anyway, yes. Talking about writing with people feels good. And talking is writing, and writing is talking, and having a few good people to talk or think about writing with, or who can be readers for you and you for them, that is life—more than just the sitting there on your computer in your freakish Upper West Side apartment with a closet full of Manolo Blahniks composing perfectly crystalline punny lines in your head once a week.
Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories from the Byways of American Religion (Counterpoint) and other works, including her "Notes on Memoir," which appears in this volume of Clockhouse. She teaches in the BFA Creative Writing Program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Raquel F. Ponce is a writer and radio producer based in Pittsburgh, and Shirk’s former student. Ponce received her BFA in Creative Writing in 2017. She is the author of the story “The Conquistador,” which appears in this issue of Clockhouse. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Adrian Shirk's Introduction
Raquel Ponce was a student of mine at Pratt Institute. She completed her thesis manuscript Miami Moscas under my advisement (and with her incredibly generous and brilliant workshop peers), over the course of the 2016 – 2017 school year. I was twenty-seven and twenty-eight-years-old through the duration of that time, which I’m reflecting on now that Raquel is very nearly closing that gap. Miami Moscas was, from the outset, this excellently textured, hybrid manuscript—at once a collection of short stories, an operatic ring cycle, and a novella. It chronicles the life and times of a Peruvian immigrant family as they make their way in early-2000s Miami, following their escape from the violent hold of the Shining Path movement in their home country. The family are Seventh-day Adventist, and so bring to the page the particularity of that theology, chiefly, a belief in Millenarianism—that the end is nigh.
Each story in Miami Moscas adopts a different character perspective—the mother’s, the father’s, the brother’s, the little sister’s. Further, the stories take on different styles, lengths, narrative modes, and often move through dramatically different time periods, allowing for a multi-dimensional, dialogic story to unfold about family, identity and diaspora that insists on the readers’ intimacy with everyone involved.
When I first read Raquel’s work—back in that fall 2016 classroom, as we all watched in slow-motion horror the election of the 45th president of the United States—I immediately recognized her incredible sense of pacing and timing, a real natural instinct about where a story begins, about how to weight a story’s attention in ways so that the tension is always coming from more than one place, and produces results and reactions that are often as unexpected, mysterious and shocking to the readers, as they are for the characters. I think all of these things are especially present in “The Conquistador,” where we see the patriarch, Arturo, as macho as he is, in spite of himself, incredibly vulnerable.
Adrian Shirk: I’m so excited that one of your stories is appearing in this issue of Clockhouse. Can you tell us a little bit about Miami Moscas, the work-in-progress that it’s taken from?
Raquel F. Ponce: So, Miami Moscas is set in three main locations: Peru; San Jose, California; and, of course, Miami. The story itself jumps back and forth through time, as early as 1987 and as far in the future as the 2020s. I knew I wanted the family’s journey to somewhat mirror my own, but I also wanted to add on to it. Isn’t that what fiction is for? My characters start off poor, searching for that American Dream, which doesn’t really exist anymore. They make it to the middle class, but the fight to get there changes their relationships with one another. [The project] started as a story about a mother, who serves as the glue for her family. It’s about the mother, but told through the children and, at times, the husband. The family are Seventh-Day Adventists who flee Peru in the ‘90s because of terrorism, and start a new life in America.
After I graduated from Pratt, [the stories] grew into a larger story about religion versus supernatural experience, machismo, the immigrant life and what that does to a family. There is a lot more I’m discovering about it as I go. I’m researching more into Peru, talking to family members and using these experiences to help shape the story.
AS: Do you feel like it will still function more like a sequence of stories, or do you think it will ultimately read more fluidly like a novel or a novella?
RP: That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Because some pieces can stand alone, but others sort of float. And I like that. I like having some breathers from intense, long stories.
AS: I like that, too. And it’s murky, generally, for me at least, about what constitutes a story versus a chapter versus some other form. Like, where does one begin and the other end? In fact, I can think of lots of books I love that don’t ever resolve those questions, like Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, which we read together when you were my student!
RP: Yeah, I think if I tried to write the “standard” novel way I wouldn’t get anywhere. I remember when I was a kid and I borrowed my dad’s laptop because I wanted to write a story, I think it was about fairies. But I tried to write it “like a grown up,” like all of the books I read at the time, and I got so frustrated that I only wrote four words, and they were “Once Upon a Time.” Yeah, I learned my lesson. I’m definitely more chill about writing now.
AS: God, yes—I still have experiences like that now, I mean, not about fairies and “Once Upon a Time,” but I do find when I go into a writing project with a very strict idea of what it should be, or who I am as a writer, I literally cannot proceed. And then there’s a process I still have to go through every time which is, like, continually finding my way back to myself, or finding my way back to the true spirit of the work.
RP: I think that’s where I get stuck the most as a writer. Especially after graduating. I kept thinking about writing like Carrie Bradshaw.
AS: [Laughs]
RP: It did not get me anywhere.
AS: I’m often thinking of Carrie Bradshaw, too, like--
RP: “I couldn't help but wonder . . . ”
AS: [Laughs] Right, you think: why can’t I just sit here with this cigarette, looking out my big beautiful bay window, pen in mouth, while a perfect line, a perfect a summation, just pours out of me!
RP: Yes! Half of writing is just me spacing out.
AS: That’s real, though. Spacing out is part of writing—maybe it even is writing.
RP: I’ll stare at the same smudge on my laptop for ten minutes.
AS: That’s just money in the bank, honestly.
RP: Oh, definitely. I actually like spacing out. My boyfriend gets confused sometimes because he thinks I look “depressed,” but really I’m just thinking of hypothetical situations, which then turn into a story or scene. I’m like, “Babe, it’s okay. I’m not sad. If I was sad, I’d be crying.” Then again, crying is part of writing some times. I don't know if you remember this, but there were a couple of times I cried writing a scene or story during senior year--
AS: Oh, I remember, for sure.
RP: I’m a very emotional person. It’s funny now that I think of it. Crying helped me write. A lot of what the family goes through are heightened versions of my own history so it helps to connect with that part of myself, of my history. Does that make sense?
AS: Absolutely. Yes, I don’t mean to sound too woo woo here, but I think if the process of making work brings you into that deep place—that feels sort of mysterious and overwhelming and painful and indescribable—then you’re doing it right. I really think that if you feel like you understand your own work too well, like, if you feel two steps ahead of it, you’re probably missing something. The work should always be two steps ahead of you, the author. The work should be smarter than you in a way, taking you on a weird journey.
RP: Yes! I used to think if I wasn’t ahead of my story or had it completely planned out then I would fail, or my writing wouldn't go
anywhere. But I’ve tried that. I got overwhelmed easily because I tried to control the story. She’s a wild beast and I’m learning to let her live.
AS: I wanted to circle back to this, partly because it’s an area of personal interest: Can you give an example of some research or research-like conversations you’ve had with family members sometime in the last year, and describe the way it entered into the expansion of Miami Moscas?
RP: So, a lot of my questions were answered after my favorite Abuelito passed away summer of 2017, and then my Abuelita on my dad’s side passed in 2018. I learned about how my Abuelito and Abuelita (mom’s side) met. How they converted to Adventism, and their relationship. They probably are the only example of a strong relationship in my family. I learned he was the mayor of my mom’s hometown, Tingo Maria, during the height of Sendero Luminoso. He was a man of God, and though I don’t consider myself an Adventist anymore, I truly felt my Abuelito had some angels protecting him. My Abuelita, from my dad’s side, lived to be 97. She’s the protagonist and antagonist. She could make any grown man, woman, or dog cry. But that’s the culture of southern Peru. The people who live high up in the Andes. They’re called serranos and serranas. Her stepmother physically abused her. She made her work hard and long hours in the fields. It sort of sounded like the evil step-mother from Cinderella, expect the Peru version. Instead of a pumpkin they had llamas.
AS: Wow—it’s so wild how much stuff unearths within families when people pass away. Is all or any of this material entering in your work right now? Did a new character show up or start to take clearer shape?
RP: Right, so this might be messed up, but before my Abuelita died, I had started a story about her death. Honestly, she was really old and we all loved her, but it was still on everyone’s mind. She was the matriarch. Even in her old age, no one fucked with her. But I couldn’t finish the story. I kept changing everything. Only after her death did I really understand her impact on all of us. She was a constant in my life. We all sought her approval and didn’t even realize it. So I changed that story. It’s somewhat of a fantasy now. Peru is a very supernatural place, especially the Amazon, but my family is so religious. We sort of missed out on that part of Peru’s history.
AS: You mean the way that colonial Christianity, as a general historical force, tried to erase the folk or indigenous spirituality of the region?
RP: Yes. So, my mom is much more free and open to that history. She works with and talks with many indigenous people because she’s deep in the rainforest. It’s two hours out of Pucallpa, one of the main cities in the Ucayali region. Her closest friend is from that area. He taught me a lot about the land. He can name almost every single plant that grows in the rainforest. He is so in tune with the land and is really just a wise and calm person. He’s the one who taught my mom and I about the good and bad spirits. He knows the real shamans, not the Viceland versions. That’s the difference between Lima and Pucallpa. Lima is city and heavily focused on religion. Most are Catholic.
AS: Would it be too trite to ask you what you feel like is next on the horizon, in terms of writing, whether this project or another? Or just in general?
RP: How dare you! [Laughs]. I’ve never been too confident in myself and my writing. Even after Pratt. I left Brooklyn thinking Brooklyn was the reason I couldn’t write. I thought I was too distracted or lost, and then I moved to Pittsburgh and my mentality didn’t change. I worked eight hours a day in a boring office, most of the day wasted away on Netflix, and it took me a few months into 2018 to wake myself up. I had a bunch of ideas, but was too scared to write them down. Now I tell myself “fuck it” and write down everything. I have another story I’m so close to finishing. I’ve been working on the revision for a couple of months. I still have those days where I can’t even look at my laptop because I think what I wrote is trash, but it’s not as intense anymore. I want to finish Miami Moscas. It’s constantly on my mind. I dream about it.
AS: Yes, all of that is so real. Writing and making is very slow, or just long. I had this experience this winter actually where I was working on, well, basically, I had been “working on a book about American utopian communities” for the last year. That’s what I’d say. And it was true, in that I was doing a lot of reading, messy research, visiting communities, thinking about it, staring at the smudge on my computer thinking about utopianianism, trying to think about how my own life over the next few years might be able to become a little more communal, dreaming with friends, all of these things. And then meanwhile I was writing all of these notes, right? Like, “just notes.”
RP: [Laughs]
AS: I had, like, 120 individual documents of what I considered “just notes,” and the documents were titled things like, “Utopia_Nashville,” “Utopia_Bruderhof,” “Utopia_Womanhouse,” etc, etc.
RP: Oh my god. I feel that. Also, “messy research” [Laughs].
AS: Yeah, and each of these documents contained tons of random bits of writing, little narratives, thoughts, experiences, descriptions of site visits I was taking, travelogues, rants, passages from books, bits of interview, bits from letters and emails, etc, etc.
RP: I have random bookmarks and documents of, like, snippets of scenes or lines I didn’t use because it didn’t fit, but I still saved because maybe I’ll use it.
AS: Right, right! And I kept thinking, alright, any day now, one or more of these things is going to start to coalesce into something, it’s going to start to look like an essay or a chapter or something. It’s going to finally build. But instead I just kept making more and more of these documents, “Utopia_Caliban and the Witch,” “Utopia_North American Phalanx,” “Utopia_Jenny Lewis,” “Utopia_Soul City,” on and on. And then two things happened: a friend of mine was like, just print out all the goddamn documents and look at them all together.
RP: That’s a good friend.
AS: So I did, and I worked over it, and annotated it, and shuffled it around and things started to sort of connect, and I could see how things fit, or a kind of structure emerged, whatever—but I still couldn’t see the book I thought I was trying to write. And THEN--
RP: Oh my god, this is really taking me back to class, the way you’re talking--
AS: This winter break I was working through that stack of printed out writing, and I was writing new stuff, new stuff that just felt like junky sketchy notes, and I was reading, and I was stitching some stuff together and suddenly I thought, “Oh, shit, this is my book.” All of this stuff, all of these little random things that I keep thinking are the precursor or the thing that is eventually going to make way for the “real” book, it is the book, all this writing in the Utopia folder. This is what I have to work with.
RP: [Laughs]
AS: And so it felt like I went from having no manuscript to having 150 pages of writing overnight. Sort of. Basically what it did was make it possible to look at all of that stuff and see it as legitimate writing, the actual material I have to work with, and not just the lead-up or the sketchbook, but actually the stuff itself—and that the thing I was writing was not going to be a pop-nonfiction book in the conventional sense because I am not that kind of writer.
RP: I think that’s the fun part of writing.
AS: Right? I had to face myself: I write in a very weird, circuitous way, and it’s pretty messy, but kind of cool if, and only if, I really meet it where it’s at.
RP: Yes, because writing the story itself is its own journey. Yikes. I feel like I stole that from a movie.
AS: But it’s true. That may be a movie line, but it’s true.
RP: Talking about writing reminds me of why I love writing. When I’m actually writing, I’ll have a nice flow for a bit, but then have to constantly argue with myself about whether I need that one word or not.
AS: Yes, the joy of actually being in the act of writing is so, so finite.
RP: Again, it’s not Carrie Bradshaw.
AS: Carrie Bradshaw was alone in that goddamn room, too. There was no one around!
RP: Her apartment!
AS: Her beautiful apartment! Supported by a weekly newspaper column.
RP: I can’t. Her incredible apartment. With a perfect kitchen.
AS: And the walk-in closet that was also an elegant hallway to her bathroom.
RP: I will never forgive the Sex in the City creator for those unrealistic expectations.
AS: Yes, it’s cruel. You know, you never see her sitting around talking about writing or composition, or thinking about how to make stuff, or agonizing over the writing itself.
RP: I know. But I’ll still watch the show.
AS: Yeah. Emily Nussbaum has an excellent essay on why she loves Sex and the City in spite of it all, including all of that. You should read it.
RP: I will!
AS: But anyway, yes. Talking about writing with people feels good. And talking is writing, and writing is talking, and having a few good people to talk or think about writing with, or who can be readers for you and you for them, that is life—more than just the sitting there on your computer in your freakish Upper West Side apartment with a closet full of Manolo Blahniks composing perfectly crystalline punny lines in your head once a week.