"Skip the Questions and Write More." A Chat With Author Laura Thomas

You mentioned in an interview that when your son was a toddler he placed an apple core under a red sweater you’d knitted that molded and ruined the material at a time when you were struggling to write. Salvaging the unspoiled yarn to create a new shirt generated a breakthrough in your writing, a realization that things that appeared ruined just required more time and attention. Can you tell us about an object, like that first great literary symbol the apple, that inspired one of the stories in your book?

Thank you for reminding me that my son’s apple, and the ruin it caused that turned out to be a blessing in deep disguise, evoke original sin! Being kicked out of the Garden is usually for the best when it comes to personal growth and inspiration.

In States of Motion, objects are always getting characters kicked out of Paradise. One of the comical, and sometimes sinister, side effects of consumerism is the inability to tame our stuff. My objects, at least, always seem to best me in the end, but maybe I’m just more disorganized than most. The first object that springs to mind in response to your question is the Weed Dragon Torch in “An Uneven Recovery.” Like most fiction writers, I occasionally borrow from real life and wildly exaggerate for drama, but the Weed Dragon didn’t need exaggeration to bring it to life in the story. When my husband and I were bumming around the local hardware store one afternoon, we chuckled over this handy flame-thrower. That is, until the owner showed us how easy it was to incinerate a pitiful clump of dandelions to poofs of smoke. My reaction was, well, let’s keep pulling our weeds by hand. I prefer not to play with fire when a non-combustible option is available, and the sad ashes at our feet seemed like overkill for a simple task. But I couldn’t help but imagine what temptations a flame thrower might dangle between Red and Gina as they struggle to maintain their marriage. Red is an even-tempered guy whose rational world has been upended. Given the right tool, he might just snap, just a little bit, just for a moment. I knew he would be the ideal owner of a Weed Dragon.    

As a follow-up question, I’m curious about whether some of the unique “props” in your collection—a pair of orange Crocs, a vial of cherry Jell-O, a bleached frog skeleton—were planned in advance or appeared during the writing process.

The props in my stories usually pop up all on their own. I’m inspired by writers like Alice Munro who use domestic props, like brooms and dishes, to instigate all kinds of trouble. Quarrels over how to sweep and scrub, how to weed, what to wear, what gets broken, are wonderfully rich proxy wars for a relationship’s underlying problems. In Richard Yates’s novel Revolutionary Road, an amazing scene has the main character struggling to place a stubborn landscaping boulder while brooding over his marital woes. When his kids interfere under the guise of helping, Frank almost hurts his son with the shovel he’s using to break open a root, and explodes with anger. The scene beautifully captures the many layers of material and emotional dueling in a marriage, with the kids acting as seconds.

The specific props you mention are minor characters in their own right. The orange Crocs in “State of Motion” end up revealing a closely-held secret. In the case of the bleached skeleton from “Lab Will Care,” the bones evoke troubling memories for Emily about Dinah, her childhood best friend. The skeleton is both a beloved object of accomplishment and a macabre reminder of the manipulations and intrigues that formed their relationship from the start.

In some of the stories, even minor characters are more things than people. In “Adult Crowding,” Jerrell has downgraded his elderly mother to an object to be managed. It’s Jerrell’s defense mechanism against her semi-comatose state and their complicated history, a way to put distance between his conflicted feelings and her impending death. When she retaliates against his care, Jerrell is all the more shocked to realize his mother still has the agency and will, not to mention the strength, to hurt him. In “Sole Suspect,” Perry’s nightly rescues of the man in the road have the feel of removing an obstruction, not saving a life. In Perry’s eyes, the would-be victim only seems alive after he’s warmed up in the car. This ritual transformation from an object to flesh and blood helps Perry to cope with the recent discovery of his daughter’s long lost body. He’s able to keep her alive in memory even while, as a guilt-ridden father, he’s grieving over her physical remains.

The theme of betrayal is woven throughout the book. Was this conscious or did you become aware of this connection after the collection was compiled?

Betrayal is just another object, at least in my stories. Treachery is business as usual for fiction because real life is so full of it. How we might be betraying ourselves in our work, or our family life, sometimes without realizing or admitting to it, is one of the great conflicts we all face. I don’t know how to write a story that doesn’t reflect my characters’ experiences of these everyday moral and behavioral tussles.

So yes, writing about betrayal is definitely a conscious choice in all of my stories. But, after the collection was compiled, I was struck by how the big betrayals begin with small violations to propriety and social graces. Little treacheries like white lies or petty disrespect often grease the skids for the larger betrayals; thefts of the heart, violence or the threat of it, gaslighting. In “The Lavinia Nude,” Marlin’s betrayal of his son’s trust and the family’s boundaries wouldn’t be possible if he hadn’t first made a habit of disrespecting his son in small ways. In “Reasonable Fear,” what Dan Rilke sees as dutiful home maintenance his wife Julia views as abuse. One small violation of trust, a white, not-quite lie told to spare a child’s feelings, leads eventually to a very hurtful revelation, as Gina experiences in “An Uneven Recovery.” Even microscopic tears in the fabric of basic politeness and decency can and do rip open under stress, as our current political climate is, unfortunately, demonstrating. So much of a family’s, or a nation’s, stability relies first upon civility.

This makes me wonder about the risk of writing the unlikable character, as several of yours might fit the bill.

One reader told me that when she finished reading the collection, her first thought was that she was glad these characters weren’t her neighbors! Well, a guy like Perry isn’t anybody’s neighbor—and at the same time, he’s everyone’s neighbor. I love fiction that makes the alien among us familiar. As a reader, I always rooted for the Heathcliffs and the Madame Defarges, the Anna Kareninas and Tom Ripleys. Manipulative, highly flawed folks, sure, but what gumption! These are not people who took their fates lying down. I find their creative vengeances, and the hypocrisies their actions expose in their neighbors, very likeable, but I know that not every reader shares this taste for the anti-hero. The risk for the writer in embracing characters no one else may love is the same risk their characters run; a lack of understanding or empathy from their community of readers. I will say that the liveliest conversations I have about any book are ones that begin with “Boy, I really hated so-and-so.” The characters that outrage us seem to excite us the most.

Some reviews of States of Motion have pointed out that the collection examines the soil from which our current climate of xenophobia grew. A writer I admire, Lolita Hernandez, told me the stories treat characters who are often looked down upon with sympathy and respect. I think both observations illuminate two sides of a very complicated coin.

Which was the most difficult or problematic story in the collection and why?

The story I revised the most was “An Uneven Recovery.” It’s the longest story in the collection, and the one with the most complicated straits to navigate between comedy and sadness. Earlier drafts took Red and Gina to a much darker place in their relationship. Readers of these drafts just didn’t buy that their marriage would recover, so I edited to be truer to Red and Gina’s actual relationship instead of subjecting them to a test that turned out to feel inauthentic and even cruel.

“Lab Will Care” was downright scary to attempt, because I am not a science person at all. I still get nervous reading it, knowing a knowledgeable reader somewhere is probably rolling her eyes.

What is your favorite word/phrase/expression, one you use or perhaps overuse in your writing? Why/how do you believe it has been “indoctrinated” into your practice?

I wildly overuse prepositional phrases. Much of my line editing is replacing prepositions and passive voice constructions with sharper, cleaner prose. I used to beat myself up over these bad habits, until I realized forming wordy constructions is how my subconscious buys time during composition. The time it takes to write a sentence loaded with prepositional phrases helps the next sentence percolate. I don’t fight this tendency anymore in my rough drafts. I’ve just had to learn to become a very careful editor, and I still end up missing a bunch.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Since I am publishing my first book in midlife, I’ve had many years to counsel my many younger selves! Several decades, in fact. My advice to myself during years of not publishing very frequently was to keep working, be open to what readers were telling me, and find success and satisfaction in writing, not journal acceptances. When my publication record remained spotty, I questioned whether to continue to write fiction. I always chose to keep writing, but at times this was an uneasy choice.

If I could go back and tell these younger selves anything, I would tell them to skip the questions and write more, with more confidence. I would also tell them to make more time to attend readings and give back to a literary community. I would strongly advise a young writer to make time for community. With a full-time teaching job and children to juggle along with my writing schedule, I had difficulty connecting with other writers and editors. This leads to another bit of advice my younger selves could have used. By all means, “lean in,” as a writer and as a contributor to the literary community; but, if you are going to have a family and a day job, embrace a chaotic schedule, a sink full of dirty dishes, regular bouts of ineptitude at home and at work, and a fluid timeline for achieving your dreams.

Each of the eight stories in States of Motion is set in Southeast Michigan. Will you continue to write about the region in your next work? Why or why not?

I’m currently writing a novel based in Southeast Michigan, so yes, I am definitely still writing about this very unique landscape and the characters it hosts.

Your work is so detailed, your characters so complex and your settings so well rendered that each story reads like a small novel. Do you plan the length of your stories in advance, perhaps to meet the guidelines of a specific journal, or do you simply write until the story is “finished”?

I do not write at all to meet journal guidelines! Not many journals accept longer work. My stuff tends to be long because, as a reader and a writer, I enjoy full immersion in fiction. I love letting a situation simmer through dialogue and characters’ unexpected reactions to an evolving situation. Contemporary literary fiction traffics heavily in lyrical compression, so what I write is a bit against the modern grain. I do sometimes try, as in “Sole Suspect,” to crystallize. More often, I play out the line before I reel things in. I don’t plan for any particular length in the rough draft, and I usually expand quite a bit in subsequent drafts. During final drafts, I cut down a lot. Most of my editing process after a certain point is hard core deletion.

In which journal are you most proud to have had your work appear, and which is your “dream acceptance”?

I don’t submit to journals I don’t ardently admire! Every acceptance feels like a bolt from the blue, pure luck, pure bliss, accomplishments that make me tremendously proud. My dream acceptance came from Annie Martin at Wayne State University Press, for States of Motion. She has long been an editor I revere. Hearing her say yes to my stories, and working with the WSUP team to bring the book to life, were incredible experiences.

Can you share with aspiring writers some common misperceptions about submitting work for potential publication?

I’ll answer this question by sharing my own misperceptions when I first started submitting for publication. Number one on my naivete list was thinking that once I published my first story, publishing others would be easier. In the literary journal world, I have not found this to be true. Correcting this misperception actually revealed a wonderful truth, that each of my acceptances came about on the merits of the piece, not my publication history. Editors really do put the work first, along with the needs and aesthetic of their journal. I’m glad the playing field is mostly level. I imagine the process is different for writers who publish in major magazines like The New Yorker, but for a writer like me who believes in, and relies on, the smaller literary journals, I’m very pleased to know every one of my publications is earned.

Acclimating to the rejection process took some getting used to, and revealed some misperceptions I held concerning the editorial process. Occasionally I’ll receive a personal note, even in this digital age, but for the most part, rejections are very impersonal. Some journals have gone the route of many agents, who signal a rejection by not responding at all. I had to train myself to view these brusque communications as professional conduct, and even courtesy. The merits of the work, and whether it’s a good fit for the journal, is the editorial staff’s call to make. It’s a kindness to make it a brief call, and let the writer move on. I’ve learned over time to refrain from submitting a piece if rejection of that piece would cause me pain. That’s how I know that the story or essay isn’t yet ready for submission. Careful editing and crafting creates a healthy emotional distance from the work, a sign that the piece is closer to being polished than raw.

The transactions around rejection bother a lot of writers, and editors too, I think. The brevity, or non-existence, of the response hides the incredible labor the editorial staff devotes so selflessly and lovingly to their submitters’ work. Once, in the days of snail mail submissions, I received the usual terse slip of a rejection in my SASE. But, by mistake, a sheet of paper had found its way into the envelope, the minutes of the editorial meeting during which my story was one of the pieces discussed. The deeply detailed conversation about my work revealed the story behind the terse “not for us, thanks.” My piece had received careful scrutiny, had been talked about, even debated. And, still, rejected. I never again felt the same alienation about a rejection. Sometimes an editor won’t get past your first paragraph, and sometimes your piece might make it to the last round of consideration. Sometimes you won’t know which fate your story met. I’ve learned to pout for all of five minutes when that rejection dings my inbox, and then send the piece out to the next wonderful, hard-working, and caring editor for consideration.

Dorene O’Brien a Detroit-based creative writing teacher and writer whose stories have won the Red Rock Review Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Prize, and the international Bridport Prize. She is also an NEA creative writing fellow and a Vermont Studio Center writing resident. Her work has been nominated for two Pushcart prizes, has been published in special Kindle editions and has appeared in the Madison Review, the Best of Carve Magazine, Short Story Review, Southern Humanities Review, Detroit Noir, The Montreal Review, Passages North, the Baltimore Review, and others. Voices of the Lost and Found, her first fiction collection, was a finalist for the Drake Emerging Writer Award and won the USA Best Book Award for Short Fiction. Her second collection, What It Might Feel Like to Hope, recently was named runner-up in the Mary Roberts Rinehart Fiction Prize. She is currently writing a literary/Sci-Fi hybrid novel.