Short Story Connect discussion

Join us on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, for a special discussion with author Geoff Wyss: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show.... If you have a question for him, please post it in this thread, where Geoff will be discussing his writing and books.

Remember - you can post questions here throughout the duration of the Featured Author Read at any time!

Looking forward to the discussion!

Why do you write? What was your most challenging aspect of writing?

Hi Jeff! How do you select the title for your books? Do they grow from your writing or do you have the title in mind before you start to write?

Hi Jeff!

I was wondering how many drafts your stories typically go through before they are ready to be published. What is your editing process like?

Iesha (In east shade house at...) wrote: "Why do you write? What was your most challenging aspect of writing?"

Thanks for the questions, Iesha!

I'm not sure I know how to answer the first question because I've been writing for so long that I don't remember asking why. It's probably as simple as having loved books when I was a kid and wanting to try my hand at passing on the pleasure. If I had to answer that question for the present--why do I continue writing--I would probably say that I feel bad when I don't do it, the same way I feel kind of slobby and useless when I don't go to the gym. It's such a part of my mental habits that when I miss a day of writing, my mind feels like it's going dark.

As for the most challenging aspect of writing, that one's easy: patience. It takes me ridiculously long to finish a story (somewhere around 3 years on average), and it's hard to make myself wait until they're really finished to send them out. The business of writing and publishing is very, very slow, and sometimes I get impatient.

Blue Moon wrote: "Hi Jeff! How do you select the title for your books? Do they grow from your writing or do you have the title in mind before you start to write?"

That's a good question. It happens all different ways. Ideally, the title grows out of the story/novel--usually some phrase that kind of sticks out and suggests one of the larger themes in the text. (That's definitely how it happened for my book How, in which several of the story titles begin with the word "How.") A title does sometimes come to me at the beginning of the process, but I've usually scrapped and replaced it by the time the story is finished.

Talia wrote: "Hi Jeff!

I was wondering how many drafts your stories typically go through before they are ready to be published. What is your editing process like?"

Good grief, I sort of hate to admit this--in part because I think folks assume I'm exaggerating--but it takes me, on average, 35-50 drafts to get a story finished. That's spread out over 2-3 years. (Of course, I'm working back and forth between lots of different things during that time.) Part of that length is caused by the fact that I have to put a story away, at least for a few weeks, so that I can see it clearly enough for the editing process to be worthwhile.

Clearly, I'm not someone who should be writing novels, but I'm currently working back through a novel (with great meticulousness and pain) that I started writing five years ago--this is probably draft 10 or so.

The anecdotes I've read about Proust, J.F. Powers, and Hemingway--all obsessive editors of their own writing--suggest that I'm not unusual in this regard. I've definitely wrung my hands over a comma here and there--put it in, taken it out, put it in, taken it out.

Hi Geoff, I was wondering. If you had to single out a single story that epitomised you as a writer, which would you select and why?

Thanks for the question, Chris. That's a hard one because I write in lots of different modes, but the story of mine that's done best (and represents the biggest strand of my writing) is "Child of God," from How. I've written a fair number of stories with high school teachers (which I am) as main characters; this is one of them. Those stories usually take place in a Catholic high school and have some sort of moral question at their center. This one is about a teacher's favorite student getting pregnant and the wrangling over whether to send her away to a temporary school while she's "showing" (which is how that's handled at the Catholic schools here in New Orleans).

It's not my own favorite story, but it seems to be everyone else's, so it's probably the smart one to recommend.

Hi Geoff,
Do you find it easier to start with an idea then build characters and story around the framework the idea suggests, or is it easier for you to start with character(s) and a starting point/conflict from which the story, as it is being written more or less suggests itself, in I suppose, a decision-tree way...leading the reader along the story's arc? Not incidentally - I think your collection "How" is superb.

Thanks for your answer Geoff! I can definitely relate - I also find myself obsessing over little grammatical quirks that may not mean all that much in the long run.

Do you ever have your friends and family edit your work, or do you prefer to solicit an outsider? In your opinion, what makes the best editor?

Hello, John, my friend.

I find it dangerous, for me, to start with an idea. I end up deploying characters in a too-constructed way to 'prove' the idea. In other words, I write propaganda instead of fiction.

What usually comes to me first is a handful of words--a phrase or sentence that feels evocative and that seems to contain some seed of both character and conflict. From there, I try to imagine what sentence would come next and next. I sort of let the language make itself, and eventually (sometimes within five minutes, sometimes not until I've wasted several pages) the nature of the story will make itself clear. Even then, however, I usually don't understand what the story is "about"--whatever deeper ideas it's trying to work out. So the idea comes last. I've got a couple stories I've been working on for 3 or 4 years for which I still can't clearly see the 'idea.'

Talia wrote: "Thanks for your answer Geoff! I can definitely relate - I also find myself obsessing over little grammatical quirks that may not mean all that much in the long run.

Do you ever have your friends a..."

Talia: That question of whether those grammatical quirks do or don't matter in the long run is one that really tortures me. They probably don't matter as much in a novel; they probably do in a short story. However, I don't know if most people read the way I do, with a kind of crazy, obsessive meticulousness. My sense is that a lot of people read in a broader, quicker fashion, and for them a comma here or there may not matter much.

It's funny you should ask about outside readers. Mostly, no one reads my stuff. But I'm realizing that I probably need someone (or several someones). I'm wrestling with a novel right now that I think I can't see clearly anymore. The tough part is that it's really, really difficult to find the right reader. And it's nearly impossible for me--because I'm so suggestible and weak-minded, basically--to sort bad advice from good.

My best experience with editors has been at a few of the journals where my stories were published. Discussing edits is a lot of fun when 1) you know the story has already been accepted and the work is thus 'real'; 2) when the editor has read your story carefully enough to understand what it's trying to do; and 3) when the editor is patient and interested enough to offer edits as a negotiation. My best editors were those at Image, Tin House, and Ecotone. I also had a couple bad experiences in which an editor simply changed things without asking.

Thanks Geoff!

As an editor, I am always eager to hear of approaches that authors appreciate.

As a reader, I am wondering: what is the best novel or short story you have read lately?

Thanks Geoff! Speaking of titles, if someone were new to your writing, what would you start them off with and why? You mentioned "Child of God" earlier; is that a good starting off point?

Hello Geoff!

We were wondering if you have any quirky writing habits that you'd like to share. Any favourite snacks, music playlists, or locations?

Talia wrote: "Thanks Geoff!

As an editor, I am always eager to hear of approaches that authors appreciate.

As a reader, I am wondering: what is the best novel or short story you have read lately?"

Talia, I really liked Antonio Munoz Molina's novel Sepharad. It's a little hard to describe, but it follows an assortment of (sometimes overlapping) characters from the Sephardic diaspora in the decades during and after WWII. I also liked (though I was also quite baffled by) Laszlo Krasnahorkhai's War and War. I would probably only recommend the second one to folks who are up for a real narrative challenge.

This one's not a novel or short story, but I'm really enjoying Alain Robbe-Grillet's For a New Novel, a collection of essays arguing for the outdatedness of such traditional novelistic techniques as plot and character.

Hi Geoff! I know you said you prefer silence while writing, but have any movies or music/artists ever inspired or influenced your writing?

Blue Moon wrote: "Thanks Geoff! Speaking of titles, if someone were new to your writing, what would you start them off with and why? You mentioned "Child of God" earlier; is that a good starting off point?"

Just based on the reaction it's gotten, I think so. That story was first published in the journal Image, then reprinted in New Stories from the South, then reprinted in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, so it's hit a pretty wide audience. As I think I suggested above, it's not my own favorite of my stories, but writers aren't necessarily good judges of what their best work is.

DigiWriting wrote: "Hello Geoff!

We were wondering if you have any quirky writing habits that you'd like to share. Any favourite snacks, music playlists, or locations?"

I'm boringly unquirky. Maybe my obsessive regularity is quirky. I get up really early in the morning and write every day, for exactly the same amount of time, sitting in the same place, with the same mechanical pencil. That actually does sound quirky, now that I've typed it. My pencil has a little rubber monkey over the eraser. I would cry if I lost that monkey.

Hi Geoff,

I live in the New Orleans area as well. When I started reading "Exit Strategy" from "How," I knew you had to be from here as well the way you seamlessly worked post Katrina and other New Orleans references (camp houses, Tulane, Saints, Times-Picayune)into your story. It felt so real.

Do you base your characters on real people in your life?

Hi Geoff,

I have a question I often ask fellow writers: Do you have a specific writing process or do you plan your writing time? ie. do you fit your writing into the rest of your life or does your life revolve around your writing?

Tom wrote: "Hi Geoff! I know you said you prefer silence while writing, but have any movies or music/artists ever inspired or influenced your writing?"

Mr. Veirs!

Gosh, that's a hard one to answer. I definitely feel like everything I hear and see influences me, but I doubt you'd be able to trace any of it in the writing--it's more a matter of those media putting me in the state of mind/heart to write.

It's not unusual for me to get too careful about my writing, and music and movies will sometimes pull me out of that over-meticulousness--there's something about the nowness of music and film that invites bravery more than writing does.

I never, ever go to the movies, but I'm a sucker for sappy older films on TCM--couldn't take my eyes off From Here to Eternity a couple nights ago.

Piper wrote: "Hi Geoff,

I live in the New Orleans area as well. When I started reading "Exit Strategy" from "How," I knew you had to be from here as well the way you seamlessly worked post Katrina and other Ne..."

I do base a lot of characters on real people (though, oddly, not in "Exit Strategy"--which, by the way, is my own favorite in the book). I wrote a lot of those stories when I was teaching at Hannan High School, before the storm, and a number of my fellow teachers would pretty easily recognize themselves.

At some point in my writing, I realized that the fun of writing for me had more to do with arranging than with pure invention--creating characters from scratch was both not something I was very good at and didn't help me end up with a better story. The people I have known are more interesting and weirder than the ones I've made up.

Amanda wrote: "Hi Geoff,

I have a question I often ask fellow writers: Do you have a specific writing process or do you plan your writing time? ie. do you fit your writing into the rest of your life or does your..."


I have a very set writing time. I've been a high school teacher for 20 years now, and I tried, during my first year, to write in the evenings. I was too exhausted on most days to work productively. I realized I was going to have to write in the morning to get anything done, so starting with that second year of teaching, I've gotten up early and written in the morning. I get in an hour and a half every day. Even in the summer, I'm so conditioned that I don't usually go beyond that.

The result of getting up at 4:00 every day is that I have no social life. I live in New Orleans and haven't been out to see live music in, I don't know, maybe ten years. There's no way to write seriously (fiction at least; I can't answer for poetry) without it taking away some meaningful chunk of your life.

Geoff, that's commitment! Do you feel it's paid off? I mean, if you were to go to a music concert instead, would you feel a part of you is missing if you didn't write?

If you're a high school teacher, can you write full-time in the summer?

Hi Geoff! I wonder if there are "writing rules" that you enjoy breaking.

Amanda wrote: "Geoff, that's commitment! Do you feel it's paid off? I mean, if you were to go to a music concert instead, would you feel a part of you is missing if you didn't write?"

Amanda,

I guess I don't really think in terms of it paying off or not. It's the choice I've made. I think it fits my nature. I do know that when I don't get to write for a couple days in a row (like when a set of essays comes in), I feel dumb and grumpy and kind of dirty, the same way I feel when I skip a day at the gym. There are definitely times when I feel like writing is kind of a silly thing to do, that objectively speaking there's nothing I could point to and call a 'pay off,' but I'm unhappy when I don't do it.

Amanda wrote: "If you're a high school teacher, can you write full-time in the summer?"

I could, if I had the will power and focus. . . . I will, in the summer, sometimes write for 2 or 3 hours instead of 90 minutes, but then my body and brain insist on getting up and doing something else.

Thanks for the reading recommendations, Geoff! Do you find yourself drawn to the same style of work in which you write, or does your taste vary when it comes to reading?

Geoff, your regularity is commendable! Do you find that routine helps with the writing process? What other suggestions do you have for fellow writers?

Carla wrote: "Hi Geoff! I wonder if there are "writing rules" that you enjoy breaking."

The longer I write, the more rules I break (which is making it harder to get published, frankly). I'm less and less a fan of plot, of stories with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. As a reader, I don't care whether much of anything 'happens' in a story, and I've recently written more stories that would be difficult to summarize.

I also like to read (and write) stories that rhetorical risks--i.e., stories that don't make themselves easy to read on the level of the sentence.

(Interesting related story: I had a recent conference with an agent who told me he would have stopped reading my piece after, in the second sentence, I used the word 'proscenium'--because it's a word not every reader would know. There was obviously a profound philosophical gulf between our assumptions about what literature should be.)

Hi Geoff! Do you have a common place you like to write? Is it at your desk or a coffee shop? If not, do locations provide you with inspiration?

Talia wrote: "Thanks for the reading recommendations, Geoff! Do you find yourself drawn to the same style of work in which you write, or does your taste vary when it comes to reading?"

I have pretty varied tastes. I'll read highly minimal fiction and effusively lyrical fiction, crazily experimental fiction and staidly conventional fiction, with equal enjoyment. (Of course, all of those can be done badly or well.) I like the way different books create friction against each other, which is why I'm usually reading back and forth between four and five books at the same time.

DigiWriting wrote: "Geoff, your regularity is commendable! Do you find that routine helps with the writing process? What other suggestions do you have for fellow writers?"

DigiWriting: I usually try to avoid giving advice. I remember being terrorized by advice from established writers when I was starting out. I think everybody discovers his own way of getting the writing done (or not, which is also okay). Probably the only thing I'd feel comfortable urging fiction writers to do is to write regularly. Whether that means every day or four days a week or five days a week, I wouldn't presume to say. But routine is important because it eliminates writer's block (which I think usually comes from that too-conscious feeling that you're engaged in something special and unusual: "Here I am writing.").

I was tempted to say that writers also need to read a lot, but I have a couple writer friends who admit to not really reading at all, and it doesn't hurt their fiction.

Adam wrote: "Hi Geoff! Do you have a common place you like to write? Is it at your desk or a coffee shop? If not, do locations provide you with inspiration?"

I write on my couch, with a clipboard. If I can lure one of my cats onto my lap, that makes it even better. Iced coffee on the end table.

I don't think I could write in a coffee shop--too much stuff to look at and get distracted by. I actually like writing on airplanes--it always feels like a few free hours of space outside my life.

Thank you so much for answering all of our questions today, Geoff! We very much enjoyed having you as our featured author, and your thoughtful and detailed answers were appreciated. Hope to see you around the group!

Thanks for thinking of me for this discussion! The questions were great and fun to answer.