Flash Interview: Uniquely Crafting the Craft, a Few Writing Questions for Joanne Merriam

by Cathy Col­born

Joanne Mer­ri­am is a Nova Scot­ian liv­ing in Nashville. Her fic­tion has appeared in many jour­nals, includ­ing 55 Word Sto­ries, The Fid­dle­head, Nano­ism, Pank, Per Con­tra and South­ern Goth­ic. She is also the edi­tor of Twit­ter mag­a­zine 7x20 and ebook small press Upper Rub­ber Boot Books. You can find her at joannemerriam.com.

Many times new writ­ers can­not find some­one to relate with­in the inter­view sec­tion of online or print jour­nals. So I am putting this ques­tion out there: Do sto­ries that involve some unique sub­ject like “deal­ing with the after­math of a trans­plant” or “let­ting your blood to coex­ist with dark crea­tures” grab your atten­tion? Then Joanne Mer­ri­am may be the per­fect author to help you along on your writ­ing jour­ney. I was lucky enough to score this inter­view with her about craft, and I don’t know about you, but I’m tak­ing more notes than usu­al.

First of all, thanks for agree­ing to do this inter­view. I noticed in your bio it men­tioned some­thing about Aca­d­e­m­ic Oto­laryn­gol­o­gists. After read­ing “Facial Deficits” (Pank, print) and “Sun­down­ing,” I had a hint that you knew some­thing about med­ical pro­ce­dures. It was all very detailed. Does this pro­fes­sion sneak into your writ­ing often? It is great to write what you know.

I’m not an oto­laryn­gol­o­gist; I cur­rent­ly work with aca­d­e­m­ic oto­laryn­gol­o­gists (I’m the aca­d­e­m­ic assis­tant for four head and neck sur­geons, and admin­is­ter their fel­low­ship pro­gram). Before I wrote “Facial Deficits,” our depart­ment had a vis­it­ing speak­er in from the Cleve­land Clin­ic who had been involved in one of the first facial allo­trans­plan­ta­tions done in the States, and I hap­pened to be assigned to escort him from one meet­ing to the next, and spent our walk ask­ing about that surgery and his impres­sions; I was also able to get one of our facial plas­tics doc­tors to look at a draft of the sto­ry, and spoke very infor­mal­ly with a cou­ple of oth­er doc­tors about their expe­ri­ences with patients with extreme facial deficits. Of course, any mis­takes were still mine, but it was very help­ful to have that exper­tise to draw from.

But yes, wher­ev­er I’m work­ing tends to sneak into my writ­ing. I spent a lot of time temp­ing, so I could write for longer peri­ods of time, when I still lived in Cana­da and didn’t have to wor­ry about health insur­ance, and then again for awhile when my hus­band was in law school, and those expe­ri­ences snuck into a lot of sto­ries; for instance “Swan Song” arose from a job I had sort­ing Medicare claim forms, and “Ring Around the Cof­feepot” from a cowork­er who kept try­ing to make me get his cof­fee for him. (I’m hap­py to report that “Toy Boy” did not arise from any stints as a felon.) 

The med­ical details in “Sun­down­ing” were derived from expe­ri­ence in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. My grand­fa­ther, who died a few years ago, had Alzheimer’s, and one of my grand­moth­ers still has it. I did quite a bit of research to make sure I was get­ting details right, but most of the details real­ly arose out of anec­dotes my moth­er told me about car­ing for her father. I think it was help­ful to have an under­stand­ing of what liv­ing with Alzheimer’s is like for both the per­son and their fam­i­ly, beyond the cold real­i­ties present in the med­ical research; that care­giv­ing, with­out relief, even for those we love, can become oppres­sive.

Short answer? It’s help­ful to ground what you write, no mat­ter how fan­tas­tic, in lived expe­ri­ence.

“Facial Deficits” has a great nar­ra­tive struc­ture. I say this because you start the sto­ry with a taboo of a taboo, a state­ment on how “patients under­go­ing rad­i­cal trans­plants pur­pose­ly reject their new parts because they feel “for­eign.” It real­ly hooks the read­er and forces the char­ac­ters you cre­ate to push the change of your pro­tag­o­nist (but not with­out mak­ing us feel the resid­ual ten­sion almost for good). Do you have any advice for writ­ers strug­gling to make it all come togeth­er, who may have a unique sub­ject but can’t get “that end­ing” quite right? 

Fun­ny enough, I actu­al­ly start­ed with the begin­ning and end­ing and strug­gled with the mid­dle for “Facial Deficits.” Mid­dles tend to be my prob­lem more than end­ings. I look at the basic out­line of a sto­ry (not that I do a for­mal out­line) to see which bits are uncon­vinc­ing or just flat out miss­ing, and I pluck away at it until it feels right. A lot of it is instinct, which I real­ize isn’t a help­ful answer. I should say it feels like instinct, but it’s based on read­ing a lot. I prob­a­bly read two or three books a week, and I try not to get so caught up in the 

With so many dif­fer­ent for­mats to write flash and poet­ry out in the pub­lish­ing world today, do you ever feel like you have to rework a piece just to “final­ly get it out there?” 

No. I often rework my writ­ing, of course. Most writ­ing lives and dies by its revi­sions. But I don’t make changes to my work sole­ly to make it more saleable. Luck­i­ly, in prac­tice, mak­ing a piece more saleable gen­er­al­ly makes it bet­ter writ­ing too, so it’s not much of a dilem­ma. I do write specif­i­cal­ly for spe­cif­ic mar­kets some­times, but that’s a mat­ter of know­ing their tastes and guide­lines going in, not of weak­en­ing or warp­ing the work to sell it.

What advice do you have for those who are new and unestab­lished and want more than any­thing to get pub­lished?

I was that writer, and I sent out a lot of hor­ri­ble writ­ing, which I’m relieved was nev­er pub­lished. I would tell them to stop being so impa­tient. Unless they’re a genius (and very few of us are genius­es), they’re going to need to write a lot, for years, before their work is good enough for pub­lic con­sump­tion. I would also say, respect your future self enough not to rush your work out before it’s ready. 

I just start­ed Upper Rub­ber Boot Books in 2011, and I receive a lot of bad sub­mis­sions. I don’t mind it, because it’s part of the job, but I do mind when peo­ple send things that aren’t remote­ly relat­ed to what I pub­lish, or who argue with me about my rejec­tion (often those are the same peo­ple). So, if you do think your work is ready, my advice would be to be both focused and polite when you sub­mit it. 

There’s a quote I keep see­ing, I think by Ira Glass, to the effect that cre­ative peo­ple have taste before they have abil­i­ty, and that we have to learn how to cre­ate well enough to sat­is­fy our own sense of taste, and a lot of peo­ple quit before they ever get there because it takes so long. That’s been my expe­ri­ence too. It took me a decade, maybe longer, to write some­thing that was worth foist­ing upon the pub­lic. I still strug­gle with it. Ulti­mate­ly I think learn­ing about pub­lish­ing and sub­mis­sion eti­quette and all that is, while help­ful, kind of a dis­trac­tion from the real work of putting aside your ego and just mak­ing the writ­ing bet­ter.

I don’t want this inter­view to make it look like “get­ting pub­lished is all that mat­ters” to us. Do you feel it is ben­e­fi­cial to write every­day? Do you think it is impor­tant to have your own qui­et place to write? 

I’m sure it would be ben­e­fi­cial to write every day and to have a qui­et place to write, but it’s been rare in my life to have either of those things, and I think it’s impor­tant to be able to keep work­ing in sub-opti­mum con­di­tions.

I can make space in my sched­ule for writ­ing reg­u­lar­ly, but not dai­ly. I notice that I write bet­ter when I have been writ­ing recent­ly, and I strive to write as often as I can, but oth­er respon­si­bil­i­ties have a way of intrud­ing. As for noise, I like it, but not too much. I tend to play music while I write. Total silence makes me twitchy. 

I think what you’re dri­ving at is what sort of envi­ron­ment and sched­ule is opti­mum for writ­ers. That prob­a­bly depends on the writer, of course, but hav­ing a space where you can keep your notes with­out any­body dis­turb­ing them, and where you can write com­fort­ably, are like­ly uni­ver­sal pos­i­tives. I don’t need a qui­et space, but I do need to be able to sit so my back doesn’t get sore, and so I’m warm enough.

This ques­tion is for our read­ers that haven’t yet expe­ri­enced your work. Imag­ine I am the next pub­lish­er you real­ly want to work with. How would you describe in a few words the emo­tions you wish to come across in your next great flash or poet­ry col­lec­tion?

Hmm. This is a hard ques­tion for me, because I don’t think in terms of emo­tions. I sup­pose I want read­ers to feel ener­gized by my work.

Final­ly, Stephen King says, “[For me] good descrip­tion usu­al­ly con­sists of well-cho­sen details that will stand for every­thing else.” What are your thoughts on that state­ment?

It’s true. Lit­tle details can make a sto­ry come to life when they’re right, or can bring the read­er abrupt­ly out of the sto­ry when they’re wrong. I do enjoy some lush descrip­tion in the con­text of longer works, but even then it’s get­ting the details right that mat­ters. Writ­ing this way, with an eye to detail, is also a way of trust­ing the read­er, of say­ing, “You’re smart, and I don’t have to lead you by the hand.”

I want to thank you again for giv­ing us this inter­view. I’m sure your advice will help many writ­ers get the courage to maybe draw from expe­ri­ence, be patient in the revi­sion process, and work towards the great end­ing that their unique pro­tag­o­nists deserve.

FF.Net Author’s Note
 

Cathy Col­born is a MFA stu­dent at Rose­mont Col­lege. She was pub­lished by Out­rid­er Press, Rip­ple Zine, and Writ­ers’ Bloc and cre­at­ed a small online zine called Philly Flash Infer­no. She loves sketch­ing and paint­ing graph­ic art with a psy­che­del­ic spin and recent­ly had her work pub­lished in Pirene’s Anthol­o­gy ben­e­fit­ing Japan: Sun­rise from Blue Thun­der. Cathy has stud­ied ekphra­sis for ten years and cre­at­ed her own chap­books: Recy­cled Shoes and Stoned in Paris. On the week­ends she loves prepar­ing for the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse and bak­ing cup­cakes (but not at the same time).