12 or 20 (second series) questions with Marta Balcewicz
Marta Balcewicz
is the author of the novel
BigShadow
(Book*hug Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in Catapult, TinHouse online, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Washington Square Review, TheRumpus, and Passages North amongst other publications. Her fictionwas anthologized in
Tiny Crimes
(Catapult, 2018). She received afellowship from Tin House Workshops in 2022. She spent her early childhood inPomerania and Madrid, and now lives in Toronto.1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your mostrecent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book will be coming out in a few weeks, so it’s too early toassess its effect on my life. Having it be complete, though, feels nicelyfreeing, in the sense that I feel free to move on to my next book in anundistracted and relatively confident manner.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry ornon-fiction?
I remember always writing stories, but also poems, and also articlesfor magazines I made for my mother and letters to relatives galore. I probablycame to all these forms more or less simultaneously, and I still like allthree, though I like fiction the most. It feels the most like a vast blankcanvas on which I can do anything I want in an unconstrained way.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project?Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
I think I suffer from all the common modes of procrastination such asbeing convinced there is a certain amount of research I need to do beforestarting to write, or that I need to “get to know” my narrator well enough.These are valid tasks at first, but there’s a point at which they cross overinto being excuses for not starting to write. I enjoy Zadie Smith’s craft essay “That Crafty Feeling,” where she discusses the “Macro Planner” and the “MicroManager” type of writer and uses a house construction metaphor to distinguish betweenthem. She says that the former type of writer builds the entire house in a dayand then obsessively rearranges the contents and décor between all the variousrooms in order to attain the perfect set-up. The latter type of writer constructsthe house room by room, and only moves on to the construction of another roomor floor once the preceding one, with all its furniture and décor, is completeand perfect. I think I’m the latter kind of writer, which means that my first draftssound more or less like what I want them to be.
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you anauthor of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are youworking on a "book" from the very beginning?
For me, a novel or short story often starts with a word or phrase Ilike, and I try to think of how to build a story around it. I do appreciatethat short stories can be sites from which a larger work grows. With the novelthat I am working on now, I felt quite stuck with the narrator I’d initially chosenfor it. At some point during this period of stagnation, I took a short storyworkshop with one of my favourite writers. She was complimentary about theshort story I submitted, saying something hyperbolic about its opening lines.So, I took those opening lines that I was now very proud of, and I made themthe novel’s opening lines. But the short story’s opening lines belonged to theshort story’s narrator. So I also imported that narrator into the novel and startedthe novel anew. It was a very positive development.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process?Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I haven’t done a great number of public readings, but I don’t imaginethem as impacting my writing. They seem to me to be a relatively innocuous activity.I’m shy, so I would not say that I’m actively looking to put myself in front ofan audience, but I’m also not afraid of readings, or of audiences. When I read mywork in my MFA program, a friend told me I sounded like the comedian StevenWright, but said he didn’t mean it as an insult, just that I had Wright’sstyle. I was happy to hear that I had a style, the style of someone famous,when I hadn’t been trying to have one and was just speaking in my normal mannerand way.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? Whatkinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you eventhink the current questions are?
I don’t consciously think of my work as a site for theoretical debateor reflection. I think of it as a place where I hopefully capture a strange orfun or interesting idea in a way that comes off as aesthetically pleasing for areader. I don’t have preconceived notions of what that idea should be. Though Ifigure that the act of writing about human characters—because it inevitablytouches upon and relates to human life and activity and thought—ends uptouching upon some aspects of current theoretical concerns. That seemsunavoidable.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
I don’t think of writers, or any artists, as having a set role in orfor culture at large. I imagine some writers envision a role for themselves andtreat it as a guiding principle. But it would feel Orwellian to have a uniformrole be expected or imposed.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?
I consider my writer friends, my partner, my agent, and the editorswho are officially tasked with editing my work to all be “outside editors”without whom the work I make wouldn’t be sharable with the larger world,meaning, anyone beyond myself. Their feedback is essential, and it is also aluxury for which I am consciously very grateful.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?
My memory is quite bad so I don’t have a piece of advice that I carrywith me and treasure. I imagine this good piece of advice would deal withrevision.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (shortstories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find that short stories (and poems, and essays) provide a nicechange of pace and work a different writing muscle that probably somehow in theend works to make your main project better. I like to swim and it feels verynatural to shift from freestyle into other strokes during a workout, almostlike the body asks for it at points. Actually, I imagine a swimmer would sufferan injury in the long term without variety in strokes.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I find writing to be entirely contingent on mood and my day jobschedule, and I think that precludes the possibility of a routine, which isunfortunate. I haven’t been able to be the kind of person who writes a setnumber of words no matter what each day, or to wake up very early. If I am in theright writing mood, and don’t have to be working for my job at that moment, Isit and start writing at my computer until the mood expires.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I find films to be extremely fertile in terms of inspiration whenwriting. Books are of course even more fertile, but dangerously so, in that onecan start to write too much like the writer they have just read and loved. Withfilm, there is that distance afforded by the difference in medium at least. It’sa good challenge to think, “I’ll write in the way that director has shot ascene, or created mood, or tone,” because it’s not clear what that means andthere’s no single, obvious way of achieving that. In that sense, wanting tomimic film is more like a prompt than an invitation to copy.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Any smell that I associate with my grandmothers’ houses. For instance,old moist basements and wet wooden cutting boards.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
I imagine everything comes from a great multitude of sources,especially a creative work born from the human imagination—that would have themost sources of all. I don’t rely on a single something as a source in thesense that I consciously study it or expose myself to it and feel inconversation with it more than other things I encounter. I imagine everything Icome in contact with feeds into the brain that eventually makes a creativework.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
I figure that my favourite writers must be those who end up being themost important for my work. I love Jane Bowles. In terms of more contemporarywriters, I love Amina Cain, Lina Wolff, Leanne Shapton, Claire-Louise Bennett,Sheila Heti, Samanta Schweblin, Patrick Cottrell, Sayaka Murata. I would saythat, currently, my favourite book is Marie NDiaye’s My Heart Hemmed In.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to learn to springboard dive, but from the three- andfive-metre springboards, not just the one-metre. I haven’t tried any of them,and am terrible at diving even from a pool deck.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would itbe? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
It’s hard to conceive of writing as my occupation, as it’s not myprimary source of income or what I can devote the majority of my time andattention to, unfortunately. But it is the primary thing I occupy myself withoutside of the hours I’m working on my day job tasks. In that sense, I guessit’s an occupation. If I were not doing it, I think I’d like to be a ceramicistor a painter. In a fantasy scenario, I’d like to be a musician, someone who ispart of The Wrecking Crew, or an NBA player. In a more realistic scenario, I’dalso like to teach swimming, especially to people who have an initial fear ofthe water.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons behind an impulse like writing, or thepursuit of any other creative task, when it’s a thing that you’ve felt drawn tosince an early age. My guess is it’s a genetic predisposition mixed withunidentified environmental factors.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
I’m a Lina Wolff fan and her new book Carnality is great. Afriend recommended Scorsese’s After Hours, from 1985, and that is themost recent film I’ve watched that I’ve been telling everyone I know to watchas well.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a novel. The novel that grew outof the short story I mentioned above. I’m enjoying it very much.
