Roy Kesey‘s debut novel Pacazo, published by Dzanc Books in February 2011, has been selected for both The Rumpus Book Club and the Newtonville First Editions Book Club. His previous books include the award-winning novella Nothing in the World, a historical guide to the Chinese city of Nanjing, and a short story collection called All Over, which made The L Magazine’s recent “Best Books of the Decade” list. His short stories, essays and poems have been widely published and anthologized, with work appearing in Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction, among other places. He is the recipient of a 2010 prose fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently lives in Peru with his wife and children. (www.roykesey.com)

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had literary mentors? If so, can you describe that relationship, and its importance for a writer?

I remember how excited I got when I first read The Odyssey and discovered that Mentor was the name of an actual character. I immediately sat down and wrote a Not Great poem called, if memory serves, “At Mentor’s Campfire.” It was about hunting with my dad (Hi Dad! Sorry the poem wasn’t better!) and he was certainly my first mentor, but more in terms of living than of writing.

I had three great English teachers in high school and two great literature professors in college before I ever realized that “writer” was something you could actually be, profession-wise. Again, though, they were more reading and thinking mentors than writing mentors. After that there were a couple of creative writing professors, both poets, who gave me very good notes. And I’ve been part of a couple of writing groups with talented, inspiring peers… but that’s still not the answer to your question.

So. Well, I remember Robert Pinsky talking somewhere about how, as a teacher, he tends to privilege example over theory. I’m hashing that quote, but his point was, if you want to learn how to write good free verse, you’re better off reading The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams than you are reading Theories and Sub-theories of Free Verse Prosody and Sub-prosody by Whoever Wrote the Book I Just Made Up. I’ve talked elsewhere about Tony Earley and Lorrie Moore and George Saunders, how important their work became to me at a given moment, how I felt like it gave me permission to keep going hard for my punchlines, regardless of what else was working or not in my stories. And in that sense, I’ve never been without mentors – Nathanael West and Virginia Woolf, Donald Barthelme and Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar and Samuel Beckett…

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired? Do you have any suggestions for unblocking creativity?

I’ve certainly had the experience of sitting down to work and spending hours trying and failing to get a new piece off the ground, but I guess I wouldn’t refer to that as stuckness or lack of inspiration, exactly. Usually I was trying to figure out an answer without first being clear on the question, I think. And one of the nice things about having spent a few years in the racket is that I’m now usually quicker than in the past to recognize those days for what they are — days when for whatever reason my head is a box of mud — and to leave off trying.

But even then I keep my ass in the chair. There are always a thousand things you can do, even when your brain is a box of mud. Reading, for one. Or, if I’m feeling too dense to read, then I plot out research and track down documents for whatever the next project is shaping up to be. Or I’ll find a new magazine to try my luck at. Or work on the rough outline of a new article to pitch. Or read an old Paris Review interview or two — come to think of it, that might have been where the Pinsky thing was. (Hi Mr. Pinsky! Sorry that campfire poem wasn’t better!) Anything, I guess, that is part of the writing life. And then tomorrow I’ll try again to figure out a question that needs answering.

How well do you know your characters before you start writing them?

For short stories especially, I know very little about them. What I have, invariably, is a small weird bit of phrasing, something that sounds a little, but not too much, like something I might actually say or think in the course of my real life. And that phrasing interests me in some way, usually because I have the sense that there’s a relationship worth exploring — some odd echo or harmonic or clash — between the music of that phrasing and its content. The gap between the two gives me somewhere to slide the wedge, and then I pick up the sledge and start hammering (and yes, thanks for asking, this does indeed make me feel like Bill Macy’s character in Mystery Men, “We struck down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of not bickering,” etc.) and at some point the two break apart, and there, in a small but tastefully furnished apartment inside, is my main character.

It used to be that I’d rush to paper as soon I had half a sentence in a music that was new to me, and lots of times it would sort of peter out and I’d end up with a totally useless little half-paragraph. I have hundreds of those damn things, and god knows why I keep them — I’ve never made any use of them at all. Anyway, now I’m more patient, or try to be, and trust my memory more. I’ll give that strip a little time to marinate in whatever juice my brain can work up over the next few days, and hopefully hear a little more of that voice, enough so that when I do go to paper, by the time I hit the end of what I already know the character will say or think, I’ve built up enough momentum that the character will keep on talking or thinking or acting, and I’m just sitting there taking notes.

Can you talk a little about how the plot develops in the writing?

This is related to what I was just saying, I think. When things are working well, all the main aspects of the story — voice, character, and plot, at least — are all sort of flowering simultaneously in a given pot we’ll call setting. It feels simultaneous, anyway, though I guess it can’t be, not literally. I guess the actual process is more like:

– Fragment of weird phrasing leads to…
– the question, “Who talks like that?”
– and the answer to that question is my main character…
– and the longer that character talks, the better able I am to understand and interpret the distance between dictional music and content, which in turn gives me…
– a way to triangulate backwards toward whatever past damage causes the character to speak that way…
– and that past gives the character a propensity to make certain specific kinds of bad decisions…
– which cause the character to end up in certain specific tubs of hot water…
– and the process by which the character stumbles from one tub into another is my plot.

But again, teasing it out into a list like this feels false to the process of actually writing it, of thinking with my hands, of imagining as fast as I can.

What can you tell us about the process of birthing Pacazo?

I remember sitting outside my boss’ office in the university where I was working — the university that served as a very rough model for the one in the book, as it happens — and my boss was still caught in another meeting, so I was just sitting there, and then I got one of those odd little bits of phrasing I was talking about before. It was weirdly formal, winded, quietly violent. I knew very quickly that it was a voice I could follow a ways, and started writing the story, and got enough down that after rushing through the meeting that had brought me there in the first place, I was able to pick right back up — just making notes at that point, I think, fragments toward possible futures.

So that was the short story “Pacazo,” which McSweeney’s published a few years later. I already had a first draft of the novel by then. And after eight more drafts in eight more years, I finally figured out was wrong or thin about the thing as a whole, and set out to fix that with history. Which took me another three years. And then I just added water, and, Presto! Instant book! Actually, no, then I added Matt Bell, my editor at Dzanc. And he did what all great editors do: he helped me to sort out which bits were over-indulgent or under-clear, and which bits weren’t pulling their weight.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Full disclosure, here: I email Dan Cafaro more often than I email my husband. Two reasons for this. One, I see my husband at the dinner table every night, and plenty of things can wait until then. Two, with whiskey-sprinkled judgment one fateful winter night, Dan anointed me editor-in-chief of his newest literary undertaking, literary journal Atticus Review. So I already know him. Kind of.

Katrina Gray:  Hi, Dan Cafaro. You sound Italian. Do you talk with your hands?

Dan Cafaro:  If it were possible to talk with your hands while typing and drinking black coffee with Sambuca, I would do it, but since your hands are taken, I’ll keep to talking with mine.  Really though, people who don’t talk with their hands seem awfully stoic to me.  One of the first things I teach my non-Italian friends is to NEVER order spaghetti at a diner.  This would seem like an obvious culinary faux pas, but for Italians, the simple act of ordering pasta when you’re out is an eyebrow-raising, egregious sin.  The only time it may be considered acceptable is if you’re in a neighborhood Italian restaurant with no menu.  And even then, the macaroni may taste exquisite and they may say it’s served with Bolognese sauce, but you never compare it to Mom’s gravy at home.  That’s sacrilege.

I appreciate the tip. So, Atticus Books is like no other small press. Other than recruiting Frappucin monks to painstakingly produce each novel copy, and printing all press releases in wingdings, what else sets it apart?

Atticus Books doesn’t really exist.  It’s a figment of everyone’s imagination, dreamed up one day by my literature-loving pooch, Gambit.  Fortunately, Gambit’s dream sequence is recurring and it’s become a universal reality.  Authors are finding us and they dig the vibe.  You might say I’m committed to making the press last; I’m committed to producing high-quality print publications, while keeping my fingers in the digital pie, but it doesn’t work that way.  Everyone around me keeps this metaphysical endeavor going.  I just stay out of the way and flow with the ripple.  Atticus Books is more mindset than publishing house.  We’re a writer-driven participatory democracy.  Sentences are our bread and water and words are our biggest turn-on.

Can you give me insight into how you managed to make the following scenario true? You wake up; you decide to start an independent press; your wife cheerfully agrees.

OK, I get it; you’re not buying it.  I’ll have to play along and lay aside the canine REM-induced,  Zen-ish description of the press’s origins.  I actually woke up on my 43rd birthday and told my wife I wanted to go antiquing, like we used to in the old days.  She agreed and we headed to Leesburg, Virginia, where merchants cohabitate in a time warp, an American wormhole where people play checkers and sell time-honored rubbish.  Anyhow, we pulled into a gravel parking lot and as I got out of the car the first thing I noticed was a wooden sign for sale:  ATTICUS BOOKS.  Alas, I didn’t buy the sign, but it got me thinking and it led to many late-night, couple-on-a-mission discussions.  Most of those back-of-the-cigarette-burn-holed-napkin conversations peter out , but the embers of our talks stuck with me, so like a wild-eyed fool, I set out to find commercial space in DC with the intentions of opening a bookstore/publishing house (a la City Lights, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s iconic San Francisco-based hybrid business) … After months of skeptic looks from loan officers and real estate agents, I caved to the blasted coldhearted economics and went underground.  Then apparently Gambit caught wind of my mind’s machinations and the next thing I knew I had a blog and the makings of an indie press.

Now, on to Atticus Review. What the hell were you thinking?

Blame it all on whiskey.  And the buzz at AWP.  And my realization that the community to which I most relate is made up of writers who read and support online journals and e-zines.  Blame it all on my fascination with publishing and entrepreneurship.  And my belief that the small press movement is here to save our culture from ruin and boredom and despair.  Blame it all on the marriage of John Minichillo to Katrina Gray.  And blame it on that frizzy-haired seer Malcolm Gladwell whose book, The Tipping Point, caused my mind to blow an embolism with its theories of connectors and mavens and stickiness and context.  Blame it all on every publisher who’s dedicated his or her life to paying it forward.  Who knows what the hell we’re thinking.  It’s better than waiting around for the rapture, I guess.

The first issue was born this week, opening its eyes on a full moon. They say lots of literary journals are born during full moons. (More full disclosure: I  too was born on a full moon, 15 degrees, 17 minutes of Leo.) Can you tell, at this newborn stage, what baby will be?

Baby will be a beautifully organic creation and much like the “Wonder” to which Natalie Merchant sings, my hope is for AR to confound readers and astound them.  It may sound trite to quote a pop song, but like the parent of any newborn, I want to believe that “fate smiled and destiny laughed” on her arrival.  I’m sure as she grows we’ll face our moments of doubt (whether she’s Ivy League-material, gin mill tramp authenticity, or headed for the dustbin darkroom in back of the shuttered bookstore in the sky), but in the end, I’m a hypocritical fatalist who believes that our moonchild, Atticus Review — with love, patience and faith — will make her way.

What’s your favorite part of this whole publishing gig?

This kind of thing is fun.  So is corresponding with writers and getting to know them.  My favorite thing is coaching and motivating a writer by coaxing her out of her cocoon and having our worlds connect with others.  Good writers who deserve to be published don’t need people rewriting or substantively editing their work; they just need affirmation and TLC.  That’s all most of us really need.

Katrina Gray checks in with Fictionaut groups every Friday. She lives in Nashville with the writer John Minichillo and their lovechild. She is the editor-in-chief of Atticus Review, and she blogs about mostly non-literary things at www.katrinagray.com.

Jane Bradley is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Toledo where she teaches fiction workshops and screenwriting.  You Believers is her fifth book and has received numerous rave reviews including a Starred Review in Booklist. She has published a novella, a screenwriting text, and two collections of fiction.  Her collection Power Lines was listed as an  “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Times Book Review. She has received both NEA and Ohio Arts Council Fellowships for her work as well as three grants from the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo.  She is currently at work on a new novel, The Snow Queen of Atlanta. Originally from the hills of Tennessee, she is still trying to make sense of the funny accents and the multitude of parking lots all around her in Toledo.  Check out her webpage at www.janebradley.net.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about mentor relationships if you will, its importance to a writer?

I’d suppose my first mentors were the fine writers I read. It began with the very grim and elaborate fairy tales. Then in high school the transcendentalist ideology became something like a religion to me. I so ached to have the intelligence and craft and wisdom of Emerson. In college it was Chekhov and Flaubert and Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain in into working?

Rule #1 Walk away from the computer. Really. When stuck I go sit in a comfy chair with a legal pad or one of those black and white notebooks with the lined paper. And I sort of doodle. And I write things like, “I want to write about….” I’m trying to tell a story about…. and I ask a lot of questions like: “She wants this because…” or “He has an urge to kill because…. ” or “She can resist drinking, or stealing, or sleeping around because….” This sort of non-committal writing often will lead me into writing a story, sometimes actual scenes and even dialogue. I call this process, “sneaking up on my story,” as if my story can feel it when I’m after it and it hides. If I sort of ignore that fact that I’m really trying to write a story, if I set myself to doodling and meandering, the story comes out of its hiding place.

Are there favorite writing exercises you give students that you can share?

Yes, I have one called the oscillation exercise that forces students to accomplish that difficult task on interweaving internal and external worlds. In life we are constantly doing this — noting the world around us and thinking, feeling about it. New students have trouble with this. So I have them put their main character in a scene and notice the scenery/setting then think or feel about it. Then notice a person or group of people thing/feel something about it. Notice a part of their body: toenails that need a pedi, muscles, belly, hair, whatever, and think feel something about it. Somewhere in all this the character must reflect a bit on whatever is driving him: job, love interest, money worry, whatever suits the character. And finally the character has to act, to move, do something. This exercise just about always results in a scene or at the least the student, knows his or her character a bit, or a lot, better.

Can you offer suggestions for making characters live? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find
out who they are in the writing?

Some characters some to me fully formed. I might have dwelled about the type for a time and then I wake up one morning and there they are talking and walking around in my head. This was true for my main character Are We Lucky Yet? It was based on a real story of a Mother’s Day brawl at a Golden Corral in Town. A black woman had punched a white woman for screaming at her baby, and a brawl ensued. The local media vilified the black woman horribly. Yet I wanted to know what her life was like that pressed her into doing such a thing. I wanted to make her sympathetic. I was lots. And one morning I woke up and heard in my heard a woman saying, “I wanted it to be nice.” It was a poor white woman who’d had a horrible childhood and three kids and no husband. Her name is Vicky and she wrote the story pretty much for me. Other times you sort of meet your characters and simply have to get to know them the way you do friends. We sort of have a conversation as I write and then they go off and say and do what they want. This is how the characters in my novel worked. My agent also had a hand in the revision and had me tweak up or tone down some characters.

But sometimes my characters aren’t so helpful. That’s when I get a legal pad and write down loads of questions to and about them. Loads of questions. When I run out of questions, I start answering whatever I can. That’s when the characters often tell me what’s what.

What do you, as a novelist, hope to achieve before setting out. Where does your urgency toward creating the novel come from?

I can’t speak for other novelists, but perhaps they are after something similar. No matter what I write I’m always looking for answers to questions. For example in my You Believers, I researched the true story of the murder of Peggy Carr and of course founds lots of unanswered questions. How and why can a man be so well-mannered, yet, casually, brutally savage. What drove him to kill? He was a sweet little boy once. What happened? I also wondered how the woman allowed this situation to develop and why she drive 45 minutes with this man, knowing what he intended. I also wondered how the mom could possibly bear such pain and maintain her faith in God and the world. And then I was fascinated by the searcher, how and why a woman can make it her life’s mission to do that awful task of seeking out the missing and comforting, guiding the grieving, panicked families. How does this woman do this again and again, and keep smiling, keep love in her heart when she sees so mud god-awful horror. It goes back to that old Flannery O’Connor comments, that she what just to show what some people will do.

Novelists, I think, are chronic snoops in some way, and maybe pathologically curious.

What are some good habits for a writer?

Exercise. The body is more than a vehicle for toting your brain around. I’m not saying go be a jock, but remember that a healthy body contributes to a sharper mind, read in the Orlando Weekly about this supplement to make your body healthier.

Read. Read. Read everything. Read the good stuff twice if you can find the time. And hand with other writers. We are an odd bunch. It’s a comfort to have others around who are so driven to make up stuff.

What is the best advice as a writer you were ever given?

This from my ex-husband and dear friend, Ed Falco: When you feel stuck blocked, lazy, just write to your lowest standard. Get any, as many as you can, words on the page — or monitor. This works. Often I’ll just keep scrawling out awful stuff, and then in the process, suddenly hit gold. This bit of advice has gotten me through many a tough day. I could not have written the last two books without this, especially You Believers. That was a beast to write. And writing to my lowest standard first, gave me some ground to stand on so I could work to make it better.

What is next for you?

Currently at work on a new novel called The Snow Queen of Atlanta. It draws on the old fairy tale which I think is a metaphor for the power of intoxication. In it a boy is swept off by the Snow Queen to languish to near death in her ice palace — he is somehow drugged by the beauty of her and the stunning ice and snow. His dear friend, using the magical help of nature manages to rescue him. My book tells of two sisters, one who succumbs to the seductive power of cocaine, and one who does not. Of course my tale is to be a darker one — hey that’s what I do.out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Susan Tepper:  Robert, what I find so intriguing about your story “Shades of Gray“ are all the details that are left out.  Nothing tells us very much.  Yet it’s like a bomb about to detonate.  Or a reduction sauce heated down to its most basic elements.  Tell us how the story evolved in this manner.

Robert Vaughan: I saw Evita on Broadway when I was 19. Patti Lupone starred as Eva Peron, and threw Peron’s mistress out in Act One. Actress Jane Ohringer sang a brilliantly simple song called “Another Suitcase in Another Hall.” I can’t fathom how much this song spoke to me then, and it haunts me still: it felt like it was written for me. That lingering lyric, “Where am I going to?” The unanswerable questions.

Susan: Evita! Loved it!  I saw it with Elaine Paige.  “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” is a fabulous lingering image.  God, it’s just tearing, when you look closely at it.  It screams of pain and emptiness which is what your story does.  And we don’t know whether your narrator is male or female.  Only that the person who does the “leaving” is a he.  Was that an intentional choice, to leave the narrator’s gender up to the reader?

Robert: I had no clue what gender the narrator is/was. Still don’t, and I’m not sure it matters. I often write from this premise, leave gender determination to the reader, or in some cases hint just casually, certainly less than “he” or “she” to give suggestion. In this story, I wanted that ambivalence, the unanswerable question of gender to be as haunting as the story itself.

Susan: And it works perfectly.  It allows us all entry into the story.  Because we’ve all been there, at one time or another.  You write: “I watch him put his clothes on.  After he leaves, I feel numb.  Another stranger takes off before midnight.”  This is economical and gorgeous prose.  Without embellishing, you invite us to step into the suffering.

Well, Robert, we started off with Evita, but this also recalls to me the Woody Allen film Interiors.  You know that one?

Robert: Do I know Interiors? I’m a New Yorker, that’s like asking me if I know Woody Allen plays clarinet! Of course, and because of the movie’s release (around the time I saw Evita) perhaps the two are somehow archived in my brain together. Certainly, in Interiors, the falling apart of a family, or lives spinning out of control, or simply “feeling numb” or deserted, all render themselves to heightened tension and conflict. On another level, I do feel like the majority of this flash is interior, on the inside, potentially unknown.

Susan: Does Woody play the clarinet?  Ha ha!  (I forgot you are a fellow-NYer, Robert, please forgive my momentary lapse!)  Now you got me laughing!

But the story, yes, the majority of this flash is interior: the room, mind, body, the heart/soul connection.  When the “leaving character” departs the story, when he leaves before midnight, there is this terribly cloistered feeling.  You write:  “I feel miniscule.  Shades of gray, patterns on the wallpaper.”   These patterns- what do they look like?

Robert: It wouldn’t be the same as usual if laughter was not included here!

Yes, after the “butthead” leaves (ha! ha!), the narrator has these feelings of insignificance or transience which carry through to the next section. I wonder how a space can choke, or cage a character, like a prison or a well. (Of course the transpired events might also be working on the psyche here, we can only surmise). Originally I wrote this as one night, it all happened that same evening. But I felt as if it needed the jump in time in order to strip away even more, dig deeper into the physical and emotional bearings.

Susan: Yeah, I like it a lot that you segued into the next day.  The horrible next day- after a night like that.  But I really need to know what the patterns in the wallpaper looked like to the character.  Please tell me!

Robert: Isn’t it great how much I avoid answering? The wallpaper patterns are some horrible middle-class “Hitchcockian meets Interiors meets Looking for Mr. Goodbar” bedroom wallpaper: perhaps bluish-gray with a velvety raised pattern, like hearts or better yet, swirls that are unending.

Susan: I will admit you’ve perfected the avoidance technique to New York proportions.  Bet you don’t look anyone in the eye on the subway, right?

Well.  Now this is some answer you gave.  I knew your avoidance contained crucial information to this story.  Because we really don’t know exactly how the furniture (wallpaper, furnishings, etc) got there.  Were they chosen by the narrator, or is it a rented flat (whoops I just jumped the pond), or is our trusty narrator perhaps house-sitting in the outer boroughs?  It’s all very NY.  Oblique, the way NYers can live.  Rent, sub-let, skip out on the last payment, mysteriously lose the furniture.  I love this answer!  It sounds so repulsive and totally unlike what I expected for him.  I had thought perhaps the patterns were hallucinations (being a former interior decorator, I just gotta know these things!)

You write:  “Pale white sheets bury me in the bed.”  Robert, is this story perhaps all about the “little deaths” in each life?

Robert: I do believe as much in “little deaths” as one might in “re-births.” With those pale white sheets (appealing oh so much to your former interior decorator needs), I think I am fascinated by how one can become bedridden. Or disabled, or movement impaired. What leads up to this, how does it happen? Also, yes, those New York horrors of “the in-betweens” of living spaces: whose furniture is this? We don’t know. It “seems random, rather unpredictable.” Then again, what isn’t in life? That the narrator wonders “Did I live here?” is not unlike most transitory people, those folks who seem to be just passing through.  Impermanence.  Stayed on your couch while you vacationed and watched your turtles.

Read  “Shades of Gray“ by Robert Vaughan

Monday Chat is a bi-weekly series in which Susan Tepper has a conversation with a Fictionaut writer about one of his or her stories. Susan is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review, fiction editor of Wilderness House Literary Review, co-author of new novel What May Have Been, and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Jessica Anya Blau is my new best friend on Twitter, but I told her I couldn’t go with her to the Naked Book Club reading in Baltimore last week, and boy was that the right choice. Because thirty guys showed up and the place smelled like a boy’s locker room and one guy had a boner and another neon green public hair. Hairy men asses on chairs with one guy who had actually read the book. The author was fully clothed and apologizing. If you think this sounds like a scene from a Jessica Anya Blau novel, or a dinner party at her parents’ house in California, go to the head of the class.

Meg Wolitzer observes that when she reads fiction that is breathlessly funny, it almost always has another strong quality attached to it, which might be, say, melancholy, or self-deprecation, or fury. In Blau’s case, I would describe the other quality as a kind of exquisite longing. Both of Blau’s novels — The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, and her just published Drinking Closer to Home — have me rolling on the floor laughing one minute, then curling up fetal in the next. There is an indescribable longing for domestic order in the comedic chaos which Blau’s fiction creates. Because she is writing very close to home indeed, it makes it all the more poignant.

Blau gave what surely qualifies as the most antic, screwball, hilarious interview ever, talking about her two novels. I love that we come into the interview in medias res. It’s like a madcap Platonic symposium on speed. You can read it here.

I love Blau’s Author’s Note, accompanying her story. We dedicate this issue of Line Breaks to those of us who have suffered through a writer’s workshop from hell.

The Age of the Asshole

Just about everyone goes through the Age of the Asshole. It’s the period of time when you’re still young enough to feel invulnerable, but old enough to have achieved something of worth (graduate school, a first published book, medical school, etc.).  You think that you’re important and what you say should be heard.

I went through my Asshole stage early, in my mid twenties, when I first moved to Canada. Most people go through it in their early thirties. Knowing that it’s temporary (in most cases), and having humiliated myself in this way, too, makes it  easy for me to forgive the two Asshole people I met at the Sewanee Writers’ Workshop in the summer of ’05.

She: Thirty-something, clever banter, pigtails like the storybook Heidi, zaftig in a fuck-you-I’ll-eat-what-I-want way.

He: Thirty-something, one book published in England, a tissue-worn MacDowell tee-shirt, gym-arms, fitted jeans that were definitely tried on in a dressing room and decided upon, not just picked up.

Me: terrified of writers’ colonies, always worried that everyone will think I’m the worst writer in the room.

The opening day of workshop, my story, “White Bread,” was first up. Heidi opened her mouth and gave a monologue that included vocabulary words I later had to look up (copromania, teutsche, fecus). The story was worthless, she said, a narcissistic, solipsistic, repugnant waste of time. The moment she needed a breath, MacDowell took over, reiterating her caustic analysis, although with a more accessible vocabulary. When they were done, there was absolute silence in the room. People appeared to be terrified to say anything lest they, too, be ridiculed as absurd, hackneyed shams. In fact, the subject was dropped, as if “White Bread” weren’t even worth discussing. I felt boneless, shapeless, like a blob of fat and oil you’d want immediately wiped up from your kitchen floor.

When I got home from Sewanee, I didn’t revise “White Bread” (I couldn’t bear to look at it that closely). Instead, I changed the opening sentence and sent the story to The First Line. They took it immediately. And later that year, the story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

I have no idea where Heidi and MacDowell are today, but chances are they’re no longer in the Age of the Asshole. Surely something’s come along to remind them that we’re all dorks, we’re all vulnerable, and we’re all afraid.

-Jessica Anya Blau

Read “White Bread” on Fictionaut

Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is edited by Gary Percesepe.

Timothy Schaffert is the author of four novels: The Coffins of Little Hope (Indie Next pick; starred review from Publishers Weekly); Devils in the Sugar Shop (New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice); The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God (Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick); and The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters (the Nebraska Book Award). He teaches in the English Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and serves as the Web Editor for Prairie Schooner, and as the director of two literary nonprofits: UNL’s Nebraska Summer Writers Conference and the (downtown) omaha lit fest.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

I arrived at the University of Nebraska literally fresh off the farm. And living on campus, which was right in downtown Lincoln, nearly ruined me. Instead of studying, I went to the movies. I’d skip classes to see Blue Velvet for the eighth time, or Something Wild, or Lost Boys. I wasn’t having sex, I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t doing drugs. I was even barely communicating. And I’d go to the art gallery on campus that showed independent films and foreign movies on the weekends, where I saw Drugstore Cowboy and Poison and Santa Sangre. Then I’d go sit in the coffee shop and read all the books that I thought I should be reading–particularly, the Southern writers. I wanted to always, always, always be in thrall of a narrative. And I read everything recommended to me in creative writing classes I took with Gerry Shapiro and Judy Slater; I still remember the discussions of the stories they assigned: “Lawns” by Mona Simpson, “A Wedding in Brownsville” by I. B. Singer, “Builders” by Richard Yates. The stories of Cheever and Welty. The 1989 Best American Short Stories (edited by Margaret Atwood) is my favorite edition of that series, though my appreciation of it may be largely sentimental. In class, we carefully analyzed not just the fiction in the anthology, but discussed why Atwood might have chosen it; the anthology felt to me then like a celebration of all the various things short fiction could be expected to do. I couldn’t have learned as much as I did in those few years of creative writing classes if my mentors hadn’t been brilliant and devoted. I shudder to think what would’ve happened had I studied with anyone other than Gerry and Judy. And now I work with them, at the University, and they continue to mentor me. We gather every week to talk about fiction and about teaching. I suspect this situation is extremely rare–a mentorship that has lasted years and years.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

When I say I don’t write every day, it feels somewhat like a dirty confession. But I think “writing” is more than just sitting hunched over your computer, pecking away. I’m always thinking about my characters and their predicaments, running them through my brain, playing it all like a movie, editing it as I go along. But when I plan to actually get words down, get the story committed to the page, I need the whole day, in anticipation of being stuck. I put the laptop on the kitchen counter, I pace, I put on music conducive to whatever it is I’m writing. I make tea. I never sit. If I sit, I’m doomed.

Are there favorite writing exercises you give students that you can share?

My favorite is one I do at the beginning of the semester, and allows everyone in the workshop to get to know each other a little bit, while also allowing some focus on the particularities of introducing characters at the beginning of a story, introducing conflict at the beginning of the story, and the process of fictionalizing details from real life. I share with the students the first two paragraphs of “I Should Worry” by Weldon Kees–a story that quickly and succinctly introduces the characters, without the characters uttering a word. So I ask each student to write an opening of a story (a few paragraphs or so) in which a character has certain qualities of his or her own. The opening has to fictionalize four details from the writer’s life: an article of your own clothing of which you’re particularly fond; a significant object from your past; a unique physical detail of your own; and an ever-present prop in your life (such as a coffee mug, cigarette, iPhone, Chihuahua in a handbag, etc.). The student then weaves them into the introductory paragraphs of a piece of fiction (the character needn’t be based on the writer exactly; he/she just needs to be defined by these details from the writer’s life), and incorporate a line-only a brief mention– that introduces the suggestion of tension/conflict/drama that is going to draw the reader forward (in Kees’ story, he writes: Now, he thought, she would be standing in front of the mirror in the room above him, the room in which his parents had killed themselves, and she would be combing her hair with one hand, her eyes wandering from her distorted image to the pictures of movie actors that she had torn from magazines and pasted on the wall).

Suggestions for making characters live? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing? Do you already know these people?

I usually have a good sense of some of the characters before I begin writing in earnest, but not all of them, but even the ones I do know I get to know so much better by the time I’m done, that I’m not really done at all, because I have to go back through and enhance and refine now that I’m more familiar with the characters’ sensibilities and psychologies.

A friend told me the other day that I tend to go into detail about what my characters wear. I guess I knew that, but now that I think about it, such costuming does contribute to the characterization. I find that I don’t spend a lot of time describing the characters’ physical attributes, so contemplating what they might wear helps me find my way toward developing their personalities as well as offering stage props of a kind. The dragonfly hairpin that Essie wears in “The Coffins of Little Hope” just suddenly showed up, she declared it her signature, and it became a device for other things in the novel too (as well as in the design of the book; it inspired the illustration).

What are some good habits for a writer to develop?

Listening, eavesdropping, committing to memory not just the things overheard, but the way things are said-the order of the words, the things half-expressed, or accidentally expressed, through the speaker’s habits and patterns of speech. I don’t always like to pull out a notebook during an otherwise pleasant conversation–it’s a bit conspicuous and undignified, I suppose–so I find myself running the caught phrase through and through my brain, hoping to memorize it until I can subtly jot something down. So I guess, basically, a good habit for a writer is to develop bad manners. Pay attention, but stay unengaged. Something more interesting might be happening across the café.

What’s the best advice you ever got?

You know, I think the stuff that’s presented to a person as “advice” is often so very useless. There’s so much I’ve learned or picked up from other writers, and that I’ve picked up from reading novels, but anytime anybody says “Here’s some advice,” about anything at all, it’s healthy to be skeptical. The best advice is to be skeptical of all advice. That’s the best advice I ever got, and I got it from myself. Just now.

How did your new novel, The Coffins of Little Hope, find you… and/or how did you discover it?

I think a novel, or at least every novel I’ve ever written, has a whole family of sources–a character occurs to you, then later another one does, then a predicament or two, and after a while it all starts to stitch itself together and resemble a novel. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the character of Daisy–the farm woman in the book who lives on a broken-down, overgrown farm. Then I began thinking about the little newspaper in the county, and its struggles, and its flailing editor. Then I started thinking about the whole mad phenomenon of the Harry Potter book releases, and how something like that might fit into this small-town story. But it wasn’t until I found the narrator’s voice-and her occupation (obituary writer)–that it all came together.

What’s next for you?

I’m researching a few things: a nonfiction book about an influential unpublished short story and act of censorship; and I’m also researching a novel set during the late 19th century, early 20th. As you might expect, I’m trying to get a good sense of what they wore back then before I can really place myself there. I do know that one of the characters is a member of the Women’s Dress Reform Brigade.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

In addition to our regular, 100% handmade @Fictionaut Twitter feed, we are now offering an automated stream of community recommendations called @FictionautRx. @FictionautRx updates several times a day with links to new stories that are just about to break into the recommended list — up-and-coming favorites that deserve a closer look. Follow @FictionautRx: it’s what the doctor ordered!

Dear Fictionaut Family,

I’m happy to announce Front Page, a monthly post where I get to showcase your success stories in a more formal capacity. So, if you have any news to share – A book contract or published story, award or grant etc. etc., send links and/or relevant info to me so that I can include it in Front Page. Also, Fictionaut Faves is back by popular demand! If you are interested in writing about a story you have faved and why you have faved it, we’d love to hear from you.

One more news item to share: we are thrilled by the success of Fictionaut Selects and want to continue publishing these anthologies, but are in need of a graphic design volunteer to help make this work. If you have mad InDesign skills or know someone who does, just let me know. Send all correspondence to me, Front Page news, Fictionaut Faves, Fictionaut Selects, or just say hi: marcelleheath@yahoo.com.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and assistant editor for Luna Park Review. She blogs here.

Katrina Gray: So, Lynn Beighley. Or should I call you @lynnbeighley? @geek seems like a cool group. Do you have to be a geek to join? Are nerds, dorks, and goblins also welcome?

Lynn Beighley: You may call me either one, as long as you pronounce my last name correctly. It’s pronounced Beighley.

Thank you. We take umbrage with the word “cool” and we use words like “umbrage.”

Do you have to be a geek to join, you ask. Do we exclude? Us?

See, we remember standing on a field of dead grass, in the scorching Texas sun, at recess, waiting to be chosen for a volleyball team. We were always the last ones chosen. Always. Except once, but that was because Tina had her arm in a cast. We swore that we’d never judge, we’d never compare. We welcome nerds, dorks, goblins, and even jocks. Yes, even them.

Everyone is welcome, except maybe trolls.

Hang on while I recover from junior high flashbacks….Okay [phew]: Your slogan is “Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.” How does this capture the essence of @geek?

I’d like to answer in the form of a YouTube video.

It’s about embracing your inner wide-eyed child. Be the Doctor, not a Dalek. Be a Bugs Bunny, not Yosemite Sam. Be the Marx Brothers, not…well, you get my point. Be clever and open-minded. Eschew anger and force. (I don’t mean The Force, of course, us geeks, we like that kind of force. Because we’re geeks. [Where was I? Oh yes. ])

The world is, on the whole, an amazing place. Us geeks and nerds, we’re fascinated by shiny things, we’re obsessed with seeing what’s inside. We’re mesmerized by robots, even though we really want to take them apart.* We explore technologies, not because we want to be powerful, but because they’re neat!

*Don’t you hate how, when you take things apart, you always have leftover pieces?

How do you see technology changing writing and writers? There’s the development of Twitter fiction, and also the growth of writing communities (Fictionaut in da hizzous!), and the list goes on and on….

There are two things that worry me and many more things that delight me about the future of writing and writers. Geeks, we like lists. First,

Things That Worry Me About Technology and Literature

1) We’re losing our attention spans. We want it short and to the point. Will there continue to be enough of an audience that novels can get published? Are we losing subtlety in our desire for brevity?

2) Paper books, made from dead trees. I love paper books, but I’m writing this on my iPad, the same infernal, wonderful device that I read most “books” on these days. I miss the heft of a book, I miss the smell. No, I’m not buying that stupid perfume, because it’s not a book.

3) I worry authors will make even less money than before. I know, a true writer writes, it’s not about money, blah blah blah. But I’d certainly like to make a living wage from my fiction writing so I could afford to do more of it.

4) I want self-publishing to become more viable, but I’m afraid truly wonderful writing will be buried in the huge pile of mediocre writing. Not that there’s anything wrong with mediocre writing, I create it all the time.

Things That I Hope Technology will Enable

1) Maybe more people will read.

2) Maybe people will read more.

3) Maybe self-publishing will become viable.

Take me through your brain process when you read an old story or novel that was written pre-all-this-stuff. You know, where people are twirling phone cords and adjusting rabbit ears on the black-and-white television. Where a fella could have a good old-fashioned affair that did not start on Facebook.

See, you’re dealing with an old geek. I remember a time when there were these machines called typewriters. And I’ve heard rumors of a primitive device known as a pen. And I must confess, every serious romantic relationship I’ve ever had started in person. So it’s all new to me, this online dating malarkey. But I’ve heard rumors.

I admit that I have many people I call friend that I’ve never met in person. Fictionauts and @geek members Erin Zulkoski, Boudreau Freret, and Marcus Speh. And many, many more. I have more virtual friends now than I have flesh friends. Interestingly, I almost typed “real” instead of “flesh” but that’s not accurate. My online friends are real friends. At least it seems that way on this end.

I once wrote a poem about why I will never have a cell phone. Something about loving the feeling of rushing home to tell somebody something, saving up all that energy and letting it explode. Six months later I got a cell phone. Hmph. Do you have a similar story of how technology crept into your life when you least expected it? Or have you always embraced it?

I know exactly what you mean! See, I had the iPhone 3 and I got a chance to write an article on the iPhone 4. So I had to decide, do I upgrade and get the article gig, or do I stick with my old faithful primitive iPhone 3.  24 interminable hours later, I bought the iPhone 4. So yeah, like that.

There are fleeting moments when I wish I wasn’t constantly surrounded by computers, phones, media on demand. But I’m not ready for intervention. I can give it up. Yeah. Anytime I want.

Right. Of course you can. Well, hey, I had planned on asking another question, but I have to go check my Twitter. You can just say something witty and charming and interesting, and I will smile and nod.

@Katrina_Gray Highlight of my day: spotted motorcycle with sidecar. Low point: there was no cat in it.

Katrina Gray checks in with Fictionaut groups every Friday. She lives in Nashville with the writer John Minichillo and their lovechild. She is the editor-in-chief of Atticus Review, and she blogs about mostly non-literary things at www.katrinagray.com.

Alan Heathcock‘s fiction has been published in many of America’s top magazines and journals, including Zoetrope: All-Story, Kenyon Review,VQR, Five Chapters, Storyville, and The Harvard Review. His stories have won the National Magazine Award in fiction, and have been selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories anthology. VOLT, a collection of stories published by Graywolf Press, received starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, was named by Publishers Weekly as a debut to watch for 2011, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, featured as one of three notable debuts to watch on The Huffington Post, selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as for inclusion in the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series. Heathcock is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A Native of Chicago, he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University.

Award-winning author of VOLT.  For more information, visit alanheathcock.com.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Alan, what is your feeling about the mentor experience as a writer?

I think having a mentor was the very best way to learn, to the point that I’ve changed the way I teach fiction from a traditional workshop model to one closer, as much as possible in a classroom setting, to a straight-forward mentorship. I’ve decided this based on my own education. I had many years of graduate school, had sixteen straight semesters with a graduate level fiction workshop, with varying degrees of success. So I’m well versed on how workshops operate from a student’s perspective. Without a doubt the most successful learning, for me, came in the form of a professor (Robert Olmstead) calling me outside of class and discussing my work one-on-one, and doing so over an extended period of time. I was an apprentice to a master. Olmstead was generous and blunt, and because of the rigorous intensity with which he read my work, I knew he cared. I trusted him. He didn’t let me get away with anything, didn’t spare my emotions.

Writing at the highest level, from taking a draft from good to better-than-good, is an exercise in precision. I recall one evening Olmstead read through an entire story of mine, line by line, asking me questions about each choice of verb, of noun, each image and bit of dialog. It was intense. Humiliating. It was completely exhilarating. The best thing my mentor did for me was to give me the type of education that would make me not actually need him anymore. He wanted me to be the best possible version of myself (not just a clone of him), and gave me the tools to be self-sufficient. He taught the standards, precision, how to make decisions from the macro to the micro.

My education has enabled me to work effectively with editors, both when I know I should implement their input, and when I need to politely defer to my instincts, which are founded on the academic truths of writing, as taught to me by my mentor. Maybe I could’ve found my way on my own, over time, but I know the process was deepened and expedited by Olmstead’s voice in my ear. Needless to say, I’m very grateful, and try to pay this forward to my own students.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I take an accounting of the things in my life, the world, that make me feel something, or think something, or imagine something, intensely.

Is there a question I need answered?

Why does war exist? Why does the leaf turn to the sun? Why do I keep dwelling on that image of the flooded-out town? What’s down there in the water? Why do I find Picasso so interesting? What brings me joy? What makes me angry? What makes me swoon?

Writing, for me, is an investigation, and I always start with a question that begs to be answered. I simply give myself time to consider the questions, and don’t enter into a story until I feel myself urgently curious — I know the depth of my curiosity will break through any block. I turn inward, look to the things that make me feel most potently alive, for these things are the seed and fertile earth of drama.

Can you share with us here writing exercises you suggest to your students?

I give students this assignment at the start of most every semester: tell me five things you think are interesting. Don’t try and think what I might find interesting. Find five things you find interesting, and deliver me into empathy with your point of view. It can be anything, an image, a scientific fact, a story you once heard, something that happened to you. Anything. Look inward!

The point of this assignment is simple: we must always be interesting. Because of this, we must find the things that we find passionately interesting. Moreover, we must learn how to be persuasive in delivering the emotion, intellect, and imagination of our idiosyncratic worldview. We have no responsibility to be like others, but in order to be persuasive we must connect others to our passions. This seems like an assignment designed for non-fiction writing, yet I find it an incredible resource to fiction writers, too, who often forget that the best stories originate from the idiosyncratic core of the individual.

Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing? Do you already know these people?

I’m what I call an “empathetic writer”, which means I don’t try and write about characters, but try to actually become them, to see out of their eyes, hear what they hear, think and feel as they do. I erase myself. I give the story wholly over the character. In this way, my work as a writer has a closer kinship to method acting, than, say, journalism.

In order to prepare myself for the process of becoming the character, I read fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays, watch movies, do research, draw pictures, do anything and everything I can to enable me to better inhabit that character in that place and time and situation. I call it “reaching critical mass”. On any given day I decide the scene, or moment, I’m going to work toward. Then I do whatever I need to do to get my imagination all the way in the character, in that world, in that situation, feeling what they’re feeling, thinking what they’re thinking. I mean all the way in-not just a vague “in the ballpark” sense of things, but to KNOW what’s happening, to be there in-full, wholly inhabiting the character in the world.

This takes a lot of time and effort. Then, once I’ve reached critical mass, my job is simply to go to the computer and find the words to capture the truth of whatever I’m living in my imagination. Sometimes I don’t get it exactly correct the first time, and that’s okay. Revision for me is the process of finding the exact right words and details to capture the truth of the life I’ve created in my imagination. This is also to say that very little of my writing day is actually sitting at the computer creating new words. Others write draft after draft in order to find the character. What can I say? Different strokes for different folks. For me, I want that character, in that place, in that time, in the situation, to be perfectly alive in my imagination before I write a single word.

Some good habits for a writer?

Be patient. Abide high standards. Persevere.

Too often the whole writer’s game feels like a race. A friend gets something published and we feel like they’re getting ahead of us and we must hurry, must not let them get away…

It’s not a race. We must be patient. Nobody will take a draft out of your hands. It’s up to you to say when it’s done. We must work every day to learn our craft, gain an intimate understanding of the standards of quality in fiction, must abide anything that is objective and true about greatness in storytelling and the written word. Then, we must be patient, must keep pushing toward those standards, banging our heads against the desk, if needed, but not quitting, and never pulling up short. I worked on my book for twelve years. I watched many of my friends publish books ahead of me, and, in some cases, multiple books. I’m proud to say that I held firm to my standards, was patient with my work, and, at last, was rewarded by having the exact book I wanted to write. Not everybody can say that, and I sleep well knowing I can. I don’t know if this advice speaks to a “habit” so much as a mindset, but I think the habits follow the mindset so I offer it up just the same.

What’s the best advice you ever got?

Do not look beyond yourself for validation. Be brave enough to take yourself seriously. The moment you decide to look fearlessly inward, to take yourself seriously, you will stop imitating others and will become original.

How did VOLT find you, or you it?

Interesting question, though one whose answer is hard to parse out. On one hand, I write about my preoccupations, and for this book I particularly focused on things that scared and confounded me. I’m at the mercy of my preoccupations. Why is my mind drawn to this content? It’s the life that I’ve lived, the things that I’ve seen, something lodged deep in my DNA. It’s the stories my parents and uncles and aunts and grandparents told me. VOLT is a lot of who I am, things I abide more than influence. That said, I forced myself to peer deep into the dark recesses of my mind, actively pursuing a line of questioning that lead me to confront the things that scared and confounded me, hoping to find answers, to find scraps of light in the muck of violence and tragedy as I know it. So VOLT found me, is me, though was only written by the conscious pursuit of the truths buried deep within. I think VOLT would’ve been there, waiting for me, the way I’m convinced other books are now waiting for me, but was only found because I actually looked for it.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a novel set during another great flood (a la Noah), and about a family floating around in their house-turned-ark who eventually get caught up in a war over the world’s last remaining visible mountain peaks.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.