[APPLAUSE]
Now it's time I-- oh, good.
All right.
Happy to open it up for questions.
So if you have a question, please just raise your hand,
and I'll come by with the microphone.
It's always the first one.
There needs to just be a first bit.
Hello.
So I have a question based on your first story
about Rumpelstiltskin.
Yeah, please.
So when you're writing with the perspective of someone who's
known in fairy tale, like Rumpelstiltskin,
and you wrote it kind of like an interview,
how did you figure out how you wanted to write his voice?
Was it more like you taking what had been written
and kind of using that as inspiration
or you were just taking your own style of voice and using that?
Great question.
And I think it's both.
Because it sort of emerged as a kind of interview style.
And then I was kind of trying to see what sort of questions
might be asked of him.
And then I guess it was imagining the character
that I'd encountered in the fairy tale
as sort of this surly, magical being who gets so
mad he splits himself in two.
He's just this angry figure but who also wants a child.
And there's a wonderful Anne Sexton poem
where it's all about how he just wants a child
and how touching that is.
Maybe we villainize him more than we think.
And so I think I wanted to sort of allow
him a kind of crankiness while also
some humanity and longing and his own plan
that he never revealed.
Thank you.
Yeah, sure.
Thank you.
I like questions, lots of questions.
Yeah?
Hi.
So I really love this whole entire concept of secret doors
in writing.
Nice.
So basically, all of the things that the author had written
about that nobody else knew about, like your inspiration
behind things.
In, basically, what you've read, are there
any little inspirations that you don't even know about?
Right, like things-- yeah.
Well, I can tell you about the painting a little bit
now that I've read the story.
So with "Tiger Mending," the painting is
there's two women sort of kneeling in some ferns,
and there are these tigers in their laps.
And they're-- have that unpeeling.
And it's just called Tiger Mending.
And you have no idea why they're there.
So some of it was trying to think about,
why are they there, and what happened?
And there were many various false starts.
And another one that sort of began with an interview
where, at some point, I was thinking
of a job interview for a tiger mender
and what questions would get asked
and what was the doorway into that.
And then it became, as has happened before, sometimes it's
like the main character is not the person doing
the thing in some stories that I've written.
It's another person who's connected to--
like, I wrote a story about a girl
with a hand of fire and a girl with a hand of ice.
And I wrote so many versions of that.
Like, is it the fire girl's story?
Is it the ice girl's story?
And they were all kind of not working until there
became a third girl.
And then that third girl could talk
about being the regular-handed one
while there was a fire-hand one and the ice-hand one.
And she was very kind of enamored of these two
and became a way in.
So I think that's a little bit true in "Tiger
Mending," as well.
But in terms of secret doors, so much of my writing process
is about trying to cultivate a space where I'm not
thinking and kind of just going with an image
or going with the flow of something and kind
of going with it as much as I can without analyzing
and without knowing.
So it's sort of, in retrospect, can I find--
I mean, have I seen a popcorn with feet?
No, but some of the kids toys out there are nutty.
[LAUGHTER]
So that one is like, why is this a toy?
Why are my children in love with this strange little thing
for a moment and then forget it entirely?
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Thanks for coming here.
My pleasure.
Kind of building on that idea of where your inspiration lies
but more in the direction of how long it takes to get
to the finished work, that section in "Tiger Mending,"
sort of towards the beginning, where the narrator's sister
describes her sister as so focused in this gentle way,
all the way down to a penciled-in circle, I think,
on a standardized test paper, do you recall,
did that happen as sort of inspiration,
or was there work and evolution that went into that long,
kind of extended--
It was-- it was--
I don't know if it happened in an initial drafting
or a filling in of trying to understand the state of mind
of this sister, but underneath, I
think there is a motivation in me in terms of,
what is achievement?
And what is the way that the sister
is achieving her successes?
And it comes from a different place
than her really trying to ace that standardized test.
There's that sort of quietness that allows her to kind of go
into it, which I think was part of me understanding her
as a character.
But I think it tends to be that when something feels like it's
moving on the page, like it has motion inside it,
there's something in the language
that I feel interested in following.
And it feels very sentence level-based, as
opposed to any kind of even character-based.
It's really much more about following the sentences
and sentences that feel kind of awake to me in some way.
And so I think that was a moment where I felt like,
oh, now I understand a little bit more about both of them,
about one observing the other and about the way the sister is
skilled, the nature of her particular skill.
And so yeah, so I don't remember specifically.
But I think many, many stories will sort of fizzle out
that I'm writing because it feels like there's
something in the language that doesn't have a movement in it.
So it's always such a relief when
there's a motor of some sort.
And I felt like that line brought me, then,
to the next paragraph.
Where did the original impetus to take
on fairy tales and retell fairy tales come from?
Great fun.
I mean, there's so many ways into that answer.
I also teach a fairy tales class, I have to say,
so it's so fun.
It's just fun to be on the other end of like visiting tomorrow
fairy tales class.
So there's a few parts.
One is that I feel like the base of my readership
as a child was always in magical storytelling.
And fairy tales was a huge part of that.
And we had fairy tales from around the world.
We had collections of South Korean fairy tales.
And there was a collection of African folktales.
And then there was a collection of the sort
of Perrault French fairy tales.
And then there was a collection of the illustrated plates
of the etchings of Gustave Doré.
There was all this fairy tale material.
And I just like to reread.
So I reread them so many times that I really
feel like I ingested something of the way that they happen.
And I so love the simplicity of the language.
And I so love the way objects are sort of mutable.
And so that was a great love, along with the sort
of classical, the longer chapter books-- the Narnia books,
the L'Engle books-- all these books
that had a kind of magical bent in the storytelling.
And then I kind of arrived at this false notion,
but it was based on what was the reading
curricula at the time in my middle school and high school,
which was that everything turned to realism.
And it just was sort of--
it certainly doesn't have to be that way,
but it sort of was what happened.
So I kind of made this false assumption
that, as you grew up, you left behind the magical
storytelling, and there was no place for it in adult fiction.
Now I feel like I've happily been exposed to,
internationally-- there's writers
in every country writing in these amazing mythical void.
Like, I just didn't know about Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
I didn't know about Calvino.
I didn't know about Ben Okri.
I didn't know about--
all these writers just weren't--
I didn't know about Salman Rushdie.
I just had to be sort of pointed to these writers, and Angela
Carter.
And Sexton, actually, I had read, but that was poetry.
So somehow, poetry could break the rules in a way
that I didn't think fiction could.
So then, for a while, my writing was
kind of realistic in a way that wasn't really working.
And I had a wonderful professor in my MFA
named Judith Grossman, who loved fairy tales.
And she just dignified them as a form
and put them on the reading list of our summer reading
before you arrived at the MFA.
And as soon as I saw it in the middle of the reading list--
it was Lang's Story Book sandwiched
between another big L writer who I
can't think of and then an M--
Melville-- and then K, Kafka.
Well, Kafka is a good example.
"Metamorphosis" had been sort of something that
had guided me that I had not realized
was a really important guide.
And I just burst into tears.
Because I just didn't think that that
was considered an allowable literary influence.
And I think there's something about her place there
that just let me try it out.
And then all my writing just felt like it
became more specific to me.
And then I felt like I could also
use the language of fairy tales instead
of a more realistic story.
Suddenly, all that language-- what Lydia Davis calls the kind
of Anglo-Saxon part of English, as opposed to the Latinate
words, like table, chair, rug, as opposed to ubiquitous,
gratuitous--
whatever.
The feel of the words, the taste of the words, is so different.
So that felt like a great relief.
And then, yeah.
So thank you.
Since you've been publishing, have you found--
is this working?--
OK, have you found your obsessions, or the things that
are driving your writing, have those changed?
And is there anything that you're obsessed with right now
that's driving your stories?
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting.
Yes, obsessions have changed.
And they've also stayed the same in a way that
is very humbling to be like, ah, there's still a lot of objects.
I'm obsessed with objects still.
Yeah.
And now, I mean, they're just not going away.
There's some way that I just want
to write about all the things we put into objects that feels
so emotionally potent to me.
So I'm circling around that, and then connections, just
connections between people.
These are all things I'm obsessed with, too,
as interested in the connections as I am in the missed
connections and disconnections.
Both of those feel really interesting to grapple with.
But I think I do feel like, at the moment--
I don't know where this is coming
from-- but that thing of straw to gold
and to be like, how would straw become gold?
Like, what process would that take?
And then I'm working on a novel.
And part of the novel is thinking about all the things
that sort of step out of the page,
like the Pygmalion story of the statue that suddenly comes
to life and is living, breathing,
and that somehow, I feel a little preoccupied with how big
a leap that is.
And if I sort of analyze myself, it's
probably because I really, for the longest time,
did think inanimate things had feelings.
I really did.
Like I really kind of did.
Like, if I was washing blueberries
and one blueberry went down the drain,
there'd be like a whole monologue about, it's free.
No, it's sad.
No, it's free.
You know, it's be just this whole projection
onto the blueberry.
And so I think I just feel interested in how
different they actually are.
So I think that's something I'm kind of fascinated
with in the moment of like, I am different from a blueberry.
And we are all different from the makeup of a blueberry
and yet my desire to fill that blueberry with meaning
and my delight in reading stories
about inanimate things made real.
I have a lot of pleasure in that.
I think I've said that once at a talk,
and someone was like, well, yeah,
I definitely do that with all my things.
So I know I'm not alone.
[LAUGHS]
Hi.
So just kind of thinking about that idea of, basically,
how you kind of stream the magic in a shorter piece,
like in "Tiger Mending," versus the kind of magic
that works in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.
Did you have, in thinking through the logic of the magic
or how it worked, was your process
different for the short form versus a longer form?
Yeah, I think it is.
It's a different-- yeah, that's a good question.
Because it's hard to articulate.
But I'll try, which is that I think in a story--
we were talking a little bit about Rick Moody at dinner
and how his short stories--
he's just a writer who I once heard
talking about short stories as each short story,
you can really take on a new form and structure
for each short story because you're not in any way
indebted to the previous one, though at the time, as I
say this, I've been reading reviews--
I haven't read it yet-- but of In the Dream House, Carmen
Maria Machado's new memoir.
And it seems like each chapter is its own voice and form.
And that's very exciting that she's doing
that within a cohesive whole.
But I think there's often the feeling with the short story
like I can shift something.
I can make this change.
The magic can be sort of pervasive in the world.
And I can manage that for the size of a short story.
But I think, like, with Lemon Cake,
the magic was sort of almost secretly embodied
in different people in different ways.
But the world itself was our regular world.
And I don't think I've quite been able, or even
been necessarily drawn, to creating the whole world having
a sort of magical skew and sort of following
in the great footsteps of someone
like Marquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude,
where it's like everything in the world
is sort of operating in this kind of skewed way.
Somehow that feels hard, in a long form, to sustain for me.
But I can kind of live inside a character and then
in another character in another way.
Yeah.
Hi.
I'm curious, do you find beginnings, middles,
or endings--
which is the most rewarding?
Which is the most challenging?
Which one do you spend the most time in?
Great question.
These are all such good questions
and a little different, which is nice.
I think beginnings, actually, might be the hardest.
Because so many beginnings don't go anywhere.
It just feels like I'll start many, many, many things.
The blank page, I think, is the thing I like the least.
And I sort of write on a very restricted time structure
that works well for me.
But it just means I might be sitting there very bored,
and then I have to start something.
And I have many files of beginnings that just fizzle
out, just many, many, many.
And then, finally, something will
have that kind of movement or motor in it,
and then I'll be interested.
And the next day, I'll be interested in returning to it.
And it will just have something in it, which to me--
because I just subscribe completely
to the Flannery O'Connor kind of thinking of follow the story,
and just go in without knowing where you're headed.
I just have tried outlining.
It never has worked for me.
So if I'm going and I don't know where it's headed
and it has that kind of movement, that, to me,
is an indicator that there's good unconscious material
in it.
Like, basically, I feel like we don't really
know where our best material is, sitting down.
I just don't think we actually ever know.
And so you just try different things.
I try different things.
But that part, I feel like, is the most, in a way,
can be the most itchy.
But sometimes endings take a while.
And sometimes they happen really fast.
But I feel like once the thing has that movement,
then I'm really willing to follow it.
And I'm really interested in the process of going back into it,
and I'm really interested in revision.
Because it has that kind of alive quality to me, and I
want to work on it.
And the basic tenet that I go by,
and this block of time that I'm writing,
comes from a friend of mine from grad school,
who said if you write what you're interested in each day,
your writing will not be dutiful, which I always found
really, really wise, actually.
So it's like if I'm following my interest, well,
I'm not interested in most of the stuff
that I'm writing, right?
I'm bored of it.
I think it's bad.
But then something will catch my interest.
It's a cluster.
[LAUGHTER]
One over here.
Hi.
Hi, this sort of relates to the last question,
but about "Tiger Mending," specifically,
I found the ending very thought-provoking.
And it was kind of unexpected.
And I feel like it revealed a lot about the two sisters
just in that last little bit.
Yeah, good.
And I just kind of was wondering what led you,
or inspired you, to end it that way?
And in general, how do you go about finding
the perfect ending for a story?
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
And I know some people will find it thought-provoking
and sort of chew on it and find it satisfying.
And some people will be like, what?
[LAUGHTER]
But I'm all right with that.
I'm all right with that.
And I think maybe it's kind of a musical feeling, where
it's like it's a note or a kind of feeling more than,
necessarily, a meaning.
So if I'm trying to write without thinking about what I'm
writing as much as I can and just
trying to follow the actual happenings of the story-- so
with "Tiger Mending," I just felt very curious
about what was going on there.
And then, when she's wandering, I
don't know, either, until she goes and sees
them splitting themselves.
And that last paragraph just sort of wrote itself
in like a "bluh."
But then there was kind of a pause.
And I felt like, oh, I think that's done.
And I felt done with it.
And I didn't know what it meant.
Like, I wasn't like, aha!
That reveals the whole story to me.
And it's only been over time that I've thought about it
and thought, well, what do I think that means?
So it's much more a kind of intuitive moment.
And much of the time, I don't have that feeling.
So then I have to kind of sit.
Or there's a story in The Color Master called "The Red Ribbon"
that, like, 20 years later, I got the ending.
It was really crazy.
It was really long.
But there would be draft seven with this.
Here's draft eight with this ending.
And then, finally, I think, I just
felt like I had more of an understanding of the character
to feel like I could end it.
But it took a while.
Well, thank you so much.
My pleasure.
If you have any more questions, I encourage you to buy a book
and have Aimee sign it.
Yeah, I'd be happy to.
Thank you.
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