Gala News/What’s Your Story?

1. How did it feel to have your work performed at the Gala?

It was beyond thrilling. I have been writing for as long as I can remember but it has always been a mostly private activity, and I’d never been lucky enough to see someone perform my work before. To have an actor as incredible as Merritt Wever be the first person to perform my work felt like a surreal blessing. I was giddy for days afterward.

2. What is something you’d like to achieve with writing?

I’ve always wanted to write novels, and I’m (slowly) working on one now, but I love movies, too — as a teenager my big dream was to make films. That hasn’t been as much of a priority for me as an adult, but watching the performances at the gala gave me a better idea of what it is actually like to see an actor take your work and elevate it. So I’m thinking about what writing more specifically for that purpose could look like.

I’m also currently deeply motivated to write about disability and long covid. I’ve struggled with a lot of chronic illness throughout my adult life, and am now really severely debilitated due to long covid. Most individual people I’ve talked to about this (doctors notwithstanding…) have been really sympathetic and understanding about this, but my biggest impression from the past nine months of illness is that most people don’t understand that this illness exists, how severe it is for people, or that they’re at risk themselves. The government is also working to make the pandemic a thing of the past in the public imagination, but pretending covid is over doesn’t mean that people aren’t still getting severely ill and dying, or that those of us with long covid aren’t severely disabled.

There are a lot of potential ways to write about this, but I’ve been thinking most about how to fictionalize these narratives. I don’t think a book or movie or play can, on its own, change the minds of millions of people, but I think fiction has the power to make emotional problems and suffering real to people in ways that most other forms can’t.

 

3. How has your writing grown over the years?

I’m a bit stumped by this… I think the only answer I can really come up with is, it’s gotten… better? That sounds kind of facile but when I think back to what I was thinking about and trying to write in college, I was thinking about a lot of what I still do, from a technical standpoint. I’m really interested in how the structure of a piece of writing reflects what that piece of writing is about, or at the least, I try to think a lot about whether the way I am telling a story is the best way for that particular story to be told. I don’t think I was very good at working out those problems ten years ago, but I was definitely conscious of them. I was also trying to figure out how to connect larger political or structural ideas to smaller fictional stories — again, not very well.

There is always room to get better at this stuff, and whenever I read, or watch a movie, or am working on a piece of writing myself, I’m analyzing what that piece of writing is doing on an artistic level and a thematic level (which needn’t necessarily be connected to a large political idea). I have a fair amount of academic training so I bring that to how I consume art and how I write, in terms of references, strategies, and ideas. But the biggest thing for me over the past decade or so has just been practicing and reading and watching more. My ideas of what a book or film can do are a lot more complex than they were when I was younger.

 

4. What are some of your favorite books, TV shows, movies?

I watched Mad Men from the ages of 18 to 25, and as a result that show had a huge, huge effect on me. I watched some of the first season recently and was shocked by how clear-eyed it was about workplace harassment and sexism in a way that I didn’t fully grasp at the time, but which nevertheless must have gotten into my brain. I was obsessed with it. It was also a very literary show, which fit in well with my taste and interest in novels.

I studied Victorian literature, and still love those novels — by George Eliot, Henry James, the Brontës, George Gissing — more than just about anything, which I think fits in with Mad Men pretty seamlessly. They’re long, rich, full of lots of characters and storylines, and most of them are about gender politics, bad marriages, and money trouble. I try to read lots of everything, and I love all kinds of writers old and new, but my sensibility has been most strongly shaped by those fat tomes. (Also, not for nothing, they all have plots.)

I don’t even know where to begin in terms of movies, I love so many. Jane Campion made a huge impression on me in college; she was the first female director whose work I watched and whose sensibility as a female director felt really tangible to me. Paul Thomas Anderson is probably my favorite director, which isn’t a novel answer. And I love, love, love just about anything from Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, especially the screwballs and the noirs.

 

5. What do you like to do for fun (other than writing)?

Right now, I’m not able to do much besides read, watch some television, and write a little… but honestly, that describes how I spent most of my life before getting sick. I do desperately miss going to movie theaters.

My one non-arts hobby is watching tennis: even before my health problems began, I was hopelessly unathletic, so I’ve never played, but I’ve been watching since I was an infant with my mother, and I am an absolute fanatic. I don’t really do anything by halves, but it is nice to have one part of my brain dedicated so intensely to something that isn’t related to work.

 

6. How did participating in a WGI (Writers Guild Initiative) workshop help your writing, (if so)?

I’ve been writing for a long time, as I said, so the workshop didn’t help me on a technical level. But it came a vital time for me, around six months after I got sick. I had been so ill I wasn’t able to do any writing; for a while I couldn’t even really read, though I did listen to some audiobooks. This, more than almost anything else I suddenly wasn’t able to do, felt like an enormous loss of identity.

I hadn’t been in a writing workshop since college; now, in fact, I volunteer as a mentor myself, and work with teenagers who are interested in writing. But it was a huge relief to be a participant in the group: my only responsibility was to write a little something during our exercises and then listen to everyone else’s work. The simple act of being forced to write made me realize I could still do it, even if I didn’t have much stamina. Being amongst other people who were going through similar medical problems was even more valuable. This illness is extremely isolating by definition, and especially when doctors don’t really understand it it can be tempting to feel like maybe you’re just crazy. Hearing from others was, in a sad way, a huge relief to me.

 

7. What/Who inspires your writing?

Like most writers, I pick bits and pieces of things from my own life, though normally I wouldn’t say I’m a very autobiographical writer. Often I have a particular question I’m trying to answer and the piece of writing is a way to accomplish that. Mostly, though, ideas just kind of ram themselves into my brain unasked for, and then I think about them for a while, sometimes a very long time, and then I do a lot of research, and then I start writing.

I also have one friend who reads everything I write, so she’s kind of the audience I’m imagining. I find this helps a lot, just psychologically speaking.

 

8. What is your favorite piece of writing (by you or otherwise)?

Middlemarch, by George Eliot. (See above!) Everything I write seems to somehow lead back to Middlemarch. It is like a skeleton key for the human condition.

 

9. Any advice, tips, resources or guidance you’d like to share for someone who wants to write?

I’m generally wary of writing advice, despite the mentoring program I mentioned participating in above. As a mentor, I don’t really do much teaching; instead, I do a lot of editing and we discuss those edits and potential big-picture changes. I take this approach because I think practicing, and then practicing editing, and then starting the process over again, is really the only way to become a better writer.

That, and reading a lot. No matter what form you’re interested in, the only real solution is to read and read and read. And if you want to write screenplays, you should probably read some novels, and if you want to write novels, you should probably watch some movies, and so on and so forth. All of this is doubly useful if you read or watch something old — if it’s still around, it’s probably around for a reason. Like Middlemarch, for instance.