Matthew Salesses, excellent author himself and editor of Redivider, interviews Nami Mun, author of Miles from Nowhere, a novel-in-stories.
1) Stories
vs. novels vs. novels-in-stories vs. linked stories? Does it even matter? To
whom?
I prefer to write short stories the way I prefer
to eat small dishes of food (like tapas or banchan and rice) instead of, say, a
tuna casserole. I get easily bored so I need variety. I also revise obsessively,
and the story form forgives that obsession. As a reader, I of course enjoy both
novels and stories, but the experiences are different. With a novel, I read
what is given. With a short story, I read what’s given, as well as all things
not written, not shown, not said, not done. I read for the negatives. I read
the gaps between lines, between paragraphs, and in that empty space I
participate. Suddenly the story is not a thing that happens in front of me, but
a thing that happens to me.
This is why I like the novel-in-stories, a format
that contains best of both worlds: the larger narrative as well as variety. I
think of it as a large meal, divvied up into small dishes.
2) I read
that you started Miles from Nowhere with
Joon's voice. How did her voice come to you? How did you know that this
character was the one you wanted to spend eight years with?
Imagine this: You’re trapped at a stuffy,
black-tie party, where the women’s hair-dos are as stiff and dry as their martinis,
as their personalities, and the men walk around pontificating instead of just talking,
and even the waiters, with their white gloves and thin lips, are condescending
and fake. Everyone drinks with pinkies raised, everyone knows which fork to use,
and everyone, even the men, looks to be wearing make-up. You think, Wow,
there’s a lot of BS in this world, and just then a stranger—a guy, a girl—leans
in to you and whispers: “Can you believe this bullshit?”
That’s what it felt like when Joon’s voice came to
me. For years I’d tried to write like a “dead white guy” but then she came,
sounding very much alive, very much a girl, and not all that white. She sounded
naïve, wise, hopeful and sassy (the way many teenagers do when you get to know
them), and it felt as if we’d known each other for a long while. The
counterfactual/subjunctive (or whatever the name) made me want it to be factual—meaning,
I wanted to continue writing about her so that I could actually get to know
her.
3) So you saw Joon as someone completely separate from you? How much of
her character do you feel was "created"? For example, was her past
with her parents clear to you right away, or was it built around the voice that
you heard? I find that sometimes a character's history can read as a sort of
explanation for her actions.
Joon and I have a few things in common. For
example, we’re both Korean-Americans (yay!) who grew up in the Bronx, and we are both former runaways. But Miles from Nowhere is not in anyway an
autobiography, rather an emotionography. (Yes, I just made up that word.) The
events on the page are completely fictional, as are the characters, but characters
such as Joon and Knowledge and Wink definitely experience some of the feelings
I’d felt as a runaway. In this way, the characters are separate from me—very
much “created” and not predetermined—but they also carry pieces of me with
them, the way a child carries its parents’ traits.
As far as Joon’s family goes, I knew from the
start that her family-life wouldn’t be a happy one, but the details and scenes
concerning them are completely created, if not by me, then by Joon’s
personality. What I mean is, because Joon behaves and feels a certain way
(numb, passive, honest, lonely, naïve, wise, strong and weak), the parents are
written with Joon’s attributes in mind. She is the sun, and every character is created
in relation to her and to one another. And the flashbacks about her parents are
definitely there to inform Joon’s
present actions, though they don’t all necessarily explain her actions. Hopefully, they complicate rather than
explain.
4) The
first paragraph of “Shelter” (and of the book) is so amazing, from that
first long sentence on what everyone else in the shelter is doing to the
isolation of the second sentence to, after other gems, “I wandered down
the long hallway...and looked for Knowledge” (who turns out to be a person). I
want to ask about this paragraph as a way of asking in specifics about process.
Tell us how this paragraph came to be. In one burst? Through revisions? I read
that you love to revise. What did you look for and change in this paragraph to
get it right?
I
remember being afraid to start this story. Just a week prior I had decided that
the stories about Joon should, in fact, be stories toward a larger narrative,
and this big and scary realization made me want to pee and chain smoke and eat
powdered doughnuts nonstop. I would sit at my desk, and then get up to pee, and
then sit again, only to find my cigarette, my food, and so on. At some point I
took a giant breath, as if I were about to dive underwater, and typed out the
first sentence as I exhaled. (This sentence I believe is still the longest
sentence in the book, which confirms the size of the breath I’d taken.)
For
two more years I worked on “Shelter.” Witness
accepted it in 2005, and as happy as I was about that, I still felt it
needed more work, so I workshopped it in 2006, revised it some more, and then continued
to revise for Miles from Nowhere,
which went to the printers in 2008. After roughly 30 rounds of editing—an
average amount for me—and I finally started feeling okay about it, and of
course, okay about that paragraph, which now opens the book.
All
this to say, yes, that first paragraph did come out in one burst— the core of
it containing Joon’s sense of alienation and Knowledge’s warped sense of right
and wrong—but it also went through extensive
rewrites and a five-year gestation period.
This
just now dawned on me: this is more than what most relationships go through.
5) When you revise, how
much are you looking at the rhythm of breaths, or sound? Or are you looking
more at pace, at rounding out a character, at plot, at symbolism?
Every
story comes out differently but the simple answer is that I look at everything
you mention, but at different phases. Usually, before I begin a story, I have a
vague sense of the kind of note I would like for the ending to hit. (I hear
endings but I don’t see them.) Then I write the first draft, which feels a lot
like walking blindfolded inside an unknown cave, listening for sounds, and then
collecting sounds that might help me hit that final note. How I end the first
draft tells me a lot about how I should revise.
Then,
during early rounds of revision, I try to understand what the characters really
want from each other. I do this by making them talk as much as possible. Desires
lead to a more fine-tuned plot, to a stronger conflict, to idiosyncratic details.
Once I gain a clear sense of what the characters want and what the story wants,
as well as now a specific note for the ending (an E-flat ending is quite
different than, say, a C-sharp ending), then I dig into the scenes to make sure
that every word, gesture, object, line of dialogue, etc. work toward reaching that
particular note.
Then,
about a year (or maybe eight years) later, comes the hard-core line editing—my
all-time favorite activity. This is when I really focus on words—their sounds (consonance,
assonance, etc.), their definitions, their associative meanings, their allusions—and
of course the sentences, the gaps between, the syntax, the length, pacing,
rhythm, meter, and even aesthetics, as in, how the words look on the page. I
love this phase. I can line edit for twelve hours straight and not notice things
like hunger or darkness. This phase is a reward for all the hard work I’ve put
into the story. It’s the dessert. It’s the sex. And it’s the cigarette after
sex.
6) At AWP I ran into you
and another writer who mentioned that he teaches "Shelter" to his
class. How does it feel knowing that other amazing writers are out there
teaching your work? Do you ever get questions from students who've read your
book for their classes? From the professors teaching it?
I
still get a little startled when people come up and say nice things about the
book. Random thoughts of insecurity come to mind when this happens, namely, that
they have me confused with another Asian writer. So you can only imagine what my
mind goes through when someone tells me that they teach the book. Especially if that someone is a writer whom I’ve
admired for years. I usually nod and say thank you and try to walk away before
I say anything too stupid, but what I want is to scream and cheer and chest-bump
and do the electric slide.
7) What's the strangest
or most interesting question you've been asked about your book?
I
can’t think of any right now. Except that readers often tell me extremely personal things that often
give me pause. I think because Miles
feels personal, readers also feel they can be personal. I take this as a
compliment. And as a privilege.
8) How about your own instruction: what
is your one best piece of advice for aspiring writers?
Write
with your pants down. Be embarrassed, be hurt, be anxious, be giggly, be naked,
be open, be vulnerable.
More
than one piece of advice for when you’re not
writing: Read to study craft. Read with a pencil in your hand. Read often and
open-mindedly. Read someone who writes in a style vastly different than yours. Read
more foreign work. Be your best and toughest editor. Don’t waste your writing
insecurities on evil—channel them toward good, such as revising your manuscript
ten, twenty, thirty times more than you would normally. When you receive good
(writing) news, big or small, go dance in the streets or drink whiskey at a
piano bar or take that nap you’ve been wanting. However you celebrate, make it
memorable so you can recall that moment on days when you receive not such good
news.
9) Working on any
stories now?
Yes.
10) Linked?
Yes, but only in that I
am the one writing them.
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