12 or 20 (second series) questions with Miriam Gershow
Miriam Gershow is a novelist and story writer. Her debut shortcollection, Survival Tips, is out from Propeller Books March 19 2024.Her novel, Closer, is forthcoming from Regal House in 2025. Her debutnovel, The Local News (Spiegel & Grau), was hailed as “unusuallycredible and precise" and "deftly heartbreaking” by The New YorkTimes.
Miriam’s stories appearin The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Black Warrior Review,among other journals. Her flash fiction appears in anthologies from Alan SquireBooks and Alternating Currents, as well as in Pithead Chapel, Had,and Variant Lit, where she is the inaugural winner of the Pizza Prize.Her creative nonfiction is featured in Salon and Craft Literaryamong other journals.
She is the recipient ofa Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and anOregon Literary Fellowship, as well as writing residencies at Playa, KimmelHarding Nelson Center for the Arts, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and Wildacres. Herstories have been listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories of The BestAmerican Short Stories and appeared in the Robert Olen Butler PrizeStories. Her writing has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and was afinalist for the Oregon Book Award (Ken Kesey Award for the Novel).
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent workcompare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book, The Local News, changed my life hugely and not at all. It turned out to be someaningful to finally be able to say at 38, Ihave a book! It validated my creative existence and the long, wild choiceto be a writer. I’d been getting stories published for years, but somethingabout a book shifted my sense of how I was choosing to make my life and rootedme in it more deeply. Materially, I was lucky enough to get an advance thatpaid for eight months of maternity leave when I was a lowly adjunct instructor.But I woke up the day my bookwas published still with all my insecurities and worries and neuroses. A bookcouldn’t save me from myself, even though I’d deep down fantasized it somehowwould.
My newest book, Survival Tips: Stories, spans 23-yearsof my writing—some of those early published stories are in there!—essentiallymy whole career. This makes the book feel a lot more familiar to me, rather than brand sparkling new.It’s been fifteen years since my first book, and in hindsight, I was sovulnerable and full of a combination of disbelief and sensitivity whenit came out. I was unable to take in the processfully, kind of watching myself go through it rather than going throughit. Not so, this time. I’m meeting this book with joyand so much gratitude and loving every moment of the process.
2 - How did you cometo fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I was squirreled awayreading fiction all of my childhood in the seventies suburban white girlpipeline of Judy Blume to V.C. Andrews to Jean M. Auel to Stephen King. It wasalways going to be fiction for me.
3 - How long does ittake to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially comequickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to theirfinal shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I’m a quick starter! Ilove beginnings. I’ve come recently to flash fiction, and some of those firstappear – miraculously – close to their final shape. Novels never ever appearlooking close to anything. I’m slow through a first draft, never quite sure whereI’m going and trying to coax the story out. The shape comes later, thoughrevision and more revision. There are always a whole bunch of scrawled post-itsand scraps of paper strewn across my desk throughout novel writing.
4 - Where does awork of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that endup combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book"from the very beginning?
I usually begin with asnippet of character – a situation they’re in, a thought they’re having.
I’m pretty clear onwhether I’m writing long or short. Only very occasionally do short pieces endup going longer; often that’s a sign that I can’t quite wrangle my ideas in theway I’d hoped to. It’s also not unusual for a longer piece to run out of steambefore I’m done with it. That never usually signals a shorter story; it signalsthat the story isn’t there. Those end up in my very full recycling bin. I’m notshy about throwing out ideas that don’t work.
5 - Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort ofwriter who enjoys doing readings?
I love readings. I’m anambivert – love the solitary writing time, love being in community. I seereadings as the public celebration after the long, lone process of writing. Ilove sharing the work. I’m a former theater nerd. Readings are my stage! The dangeris if I read a work-in-progress too early; I’ll take the audience validation tomean the piece is finished, when often it’s really, really not. I can performit into sounding finished when the page alone doesn’t bear that out.
6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
Hmmm…theoreticalconcerns sounds very high-minded and I consider myself maybe a more intuitivewriter. I feel like I’ve always returned to the same questions, long or short,fiction or nonfiction: how do we find connection and what are the many ways wefail at finding connection and how do we recover from that failure and dobetter?
7 – What do you seethe current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one?What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Ideally, the role istruth teller, which feels essential right now in our post-truth era in the US.My first serious writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer, said, “Fiction is the lie thattells the truth,” and I agree fully with that. With fiction especially, thereis the potential to transport readers into the humanity of folks who aren’t apart of their lived experience and create empathy and understanding. I don’tmean didactically. I’m turned off by moralistic work. I don’t need a lesson.But that delicious quality of being swept up in fiction, I really do believe it can change a reader for the better.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential! I love it. Ithink an outside editor is the best reason to be traditionally published. Youhave someone as invested in the work as you are, trying to make it better.
9 - What is the bestpiece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
One of my teachers,David Bradley, said, “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.” Does this count as advice? I return to it all the time. I really lean into my strengths in earlydrafts. I’d argue all writers do. For me, my strength are are long,multi-clause sentences with parentheses andem-dashes galore; meandering tangents; a wry, clever narrative or charactervoice. When I come back to the drafts, I can see how those crowd out otherparts of the writing: a clear structure, consistent pacing, a deepening ofcharacter vulnerability. If I over-relyon my strengths, they create weakness in the overall writing. Revision becomesthe time to exercise the skills that aren’t as intuitive. I bring this up allthe time with fiction students. It’s such a good lens through which to viewyour own work.
10 - How easy has itbeen for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel to flashfiction to creative non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
In the past couple ofyears, since I started writing short short work, it has been amazingly easy.After years of failure in selling a second novel, writing flash returned me tomyself and my writing and my confidence. There was something so delightful andsatisfying about a form that I could draft in a few sittings, and then work andwork into meaning. For a very long time, endings were the hardest part ofwriting because it was the moment you had to make something of what you’rewriting or admit you were bullshitting. Often I was bullshitting. But thisreturn to short work, and the discovery of flash and micro, which are so short,and so much about the ending, made me realize I do a lot less bullshittingthese days. I have a lot to say. And I’m saying it. It feels reallygood.
And I find myselflonging to return to novel writing after spending any real amount of time inflash, and vice versa. They are such good complementsto each other, and each makes me appreciative of and restless for the other.
11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I wake up, get myteenager off to school, drink some very caffeinated tea (having recently andsadly given up coffee because of my delicate, middle-aged digestive system),and sit in front of my computer. On the best day, I get to work with thewriting, spend an hour or two on it, find myself swept up in the momentum, andbefore I know it, three o’clock rolls around with me in a happy, creative hazeas my teenager rolls back in from school.
More realistically, I’min front of the computer grading my college students’ papers, catching up onemails, setting up book events, scrolling way too much social media, andfitting writing in for an hour or two. The deeper I am in a project, the moremomentum it gains, and the more likely I am to be swept up in it at the expenseof everything else. Those are the best and most delicious writing days, and I become a relatively absent (or atleast spacey) teacher/mom/wife/friend, as a result.
12 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?
Books. So many books.Literary fiction, graphic novels, story collections,the occasional space opera. Television, everythingfrom prestige streaming series to bad reality TV. Anything away from my desk –walking, knitting, taking a long, hot bath. I need a change of venue if I’mreally stalled, to get away from the work so I can at least attempt to returnanew.
The question I’m always facing is: am Istalled out because I’m getting to the really hard stuff I’m avoiding or am Istalled out because this story idea is no longer alive in my imagination? Ihave to fight against the impulse to throw everything out when I’m reallystuck.
13 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
Childhood home? Newrain on asphalt. Current home? Teen boy sweat.
14 - David W.McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Does family count as aform? My books, most recently, have come from parenthood, marriage, and theongoing process of trying to make a home.
15 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?
So many. I’m just goingto give a long list like an Academy Award winner being played off the stage. Authors I adore and who inspire:Jennifer Haigh, Marcy Dermansky, Deesha Philyaw, Rebecca Schiff, Kathy Fish, Mira Jacob, Tom Perrotta, Lorrie Moore,Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Gabrielle Bell, SaraNovic, Mary Gaitskill, Kristen Radtke, Dan Chaon.Books that changed my life: The Feast ofLove, Lolita, Geek Love, Barn 8, The Great Believers, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Drown, Girl, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Nothing To See Here, The Invisible Circus, The Middlesteins, Notes on a Scandal, Arcadia, A Friend of the Family, Motherless Brooklyn, The Interloper, Fool on the Hill.
16 - What would youlike to do that you haven't yet done?
I want to write a bookwhere the central character is slowly falling apart, but endearingly or at least really engagingly. Likea slow motion car wreck but with wry humor and a good dose of pathos. I’ve tried writing this book three times, three very different books, none of them very good. For awhile, I thought I’d finally put this idea tobed. But recently I came up with a way to resurrect it that has me newlymotivated. It might be Sisyphean, but thisparticular boulder has a very strong pull on me.
17 - If you couldpick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, whatdo you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Broadway star, though Ican’t sing or dance. I can emote.
18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?
I think it goes back to the early,transporting experience of reading. Books are magic. On the best writing days,the process of making books is magic too.
19 - What was thelast great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. Ican’t remember the last film, so I’m going to give you my second most recentgreat book: My Murder by KatieWilliams.
20 - What are youcurrently working on?
In all honesty, I’m working on the hustlefor Survival Tips – answeringquestions for cool writerly blogs, sending out postcards to bookstores andlibraries, composing emails for my mailing list. After that, I’ll get to workediting my forthcoming novel, Closer(June 2025), with my Regal House editor. And after that, if I’m brave (orreally dense) it’s back to pushing my boulder up my hill in the form of a newnovel out of the barest of bones of an old, failed one.
