96 - Echoes Q&A

Echoes Q&A WITH BECKY MAnDElBAUM

Author of BAD KANSAS Sense CADMAN, 2020

How long did it take you to write the stories in Bad Kansas?

I started the earliest stories in the collection when I was 23 and still living in Lawrence. I submitted the whole thing to the Flannery O’Conner Award competition when I was 25 and had just finished my master’s in California; the book was, for the most part, my master’s thesis. So, roughly three years overall.

What challenges do you have as a writer?

That’s a great question—I’ll start with a story. When I was an undergraduate at KU, I had the honor of interviewing the poet Nikky Finney, who had just won the National Book Award. One of the first questions I asked her was, “How do you know if you should make writing your career?” (I was, of course, wanting her to give me permission to pursue writing—I was constantly doing this as a young writer and, in some ways, am still doing it today, even after two book publications, if that tells you something already.) She looked at me very seriously and said, “If you can do anything else and be happy, do that. If you can be a nurse, be a nurse. If you can be a lawyer, be a lawyer.” She stared me down, to check that I was listening. “This is not an easy life.” I remember thinking at the time: Well, she’s a poet! That’s why it’s hard! I figured I was going to write novels, and somehow this would make everything easier. Of course, Finney was more than right; this is not an easy life. Not that anybody’s life is easy, but writing will take a straight, obvious path and twist it into a labyrinth. You will have to find a way to earn a living that leaves both the time and creative energy for writing; this is not an easy task. You will have to be flexible, you will have to make sacrifices, you will have to wake up early or stay up late at night. You will have to say no to things you want to do, you will have to say yes to things you don’t want to do. You will have to put the writing first, or it will sink to the bottom of your schedule, or your life, like a stone. You will have to truly love the writing. You will have to be obsessed. If you can do anything else and be happy… This truly has to be the case—you have to love the work, love the simple act of sitting down and putting words on a page—or else it’s simply not worth the chaos.

Are there any moments when you feel the effects of your work on other people’s lives?

A few moments stand out. One was in Davis, California, where I went to grad school. I’d won an award from an organization called Stories on Stage, which brings in actors to read short stories at a local art gallery. At the reception, I had the pleasure of seeing the town’s poet laureate read my story “Queen of England.” The poet did a tremendous job—he had a special voice for the narrator and nailed all the jokes. When the reading was over, I was mingling with my friends when a little woman with white hair approached me, a huge smile on her face. She was probably in her 80s. “Did you write that story?” she asked. When I told her yes, she was so excited, explaining that the relationship between the brothers in the story reminded her of the relationship she had with her sister. “The whole time, I just kept thinking about my sister. It was wonderful,” she said. I can’t be sure, but I’m assuming her sister had passed. She was just so visibly delighted—it was easily the best moment of my writing career, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Just seeing that kind of joy on someone’s face, because of something I wrote. That was something else. Recently, I received an email from a stranger saying that one of my humor articles made him laugh harder than he has in a long time. He went on to say that he suffers from PTSD and depression, and that my article made his day a little more cheerful. Truly, whatever pleasure comes from winning prizes or publishing is nothing compared to these moments. It’s easy to forget the written word is still alive despite all our digital distractions. I can read a book and think “I’m a better person having read this book,” but it’s nearly impossible to imagine a reader having that same reaction to my work. Never underestimate the kindness or generosity of readers, which brings me to another point: if you read something you love, write the author and tell them! Even if you don’t hear back, it’s never a mistake.

Did The Independent School help you become the writer that you are now?

I owe so much to Independent and the teachers I had there, specifically my English teachers. Attending a school like Independent is such a massive privilege, one I appreciate more and more as I get older and recognize the gift of my education. I took my first creative writing class

at Independent, and that experience really persuaded me to pursue workshops in college. I also learned a ton about how to structure my writing through debate and AP history classes—it’s not an obvious correlation, but learning to structure my thoughts in debate, and to create an essay that has a solid thesis and topic sentences and support for each argument, are skills that still influence my fiction today. Even a short story needs a thesis, even if that thesis is more in your head than on the page—character X has mistaken his homesickness for missing his ex-girlfriend; this will cause him much confusion and pain. The rest of the story can be viewed as an experiment in supporting, challenging, and possibly proving that thesis.

If you were a young high school student considering a career in writing, what advice would you give yourself now?

Read, read, read and then write, write, write. In that order. Reading is the most important thing you can do as a writer. Read writers who you admire so you can think “I hope one day to write a book as lovely as this.” Reader writers whose work you don’t admire so you can think, “One day I’m going to write a book much better than this.” Read everything, then write, and don’t be afraid of failure or wasted words, sentences, stories, or even books. I had to write literally thousands of pages of fiction before I finally wrote a story that was decent. The desert you have to cross is long, but you have to cross it if you want to reach water. Don’t be afraid to keep going.

What was your experience like at KU? Was it a good place for a young writer to study? What is the one class a young writer should definitely take?

KU was an excellent place to be a young writer. In addition to an amazing English faculty, Lawrence has such a vibrant arts culture, not only for writers but for musicians and visual artists as well. I started college as a psychology major, but one of my first classes at KU was an introductory fiction writing workshop. After that class, I was hooked, and pretty quickly switched my major to English. Aspiring writers should take all the workshops they can manage—not just in their preferred genre but in other genres as well. Not only do workshops mean you are guaranteed to read and produce a certain number of stories/poems/essays per semester, but they also introduce you to the world of criticism—how to withstand it, how to let it improve your work rather than defeat you. Writers must grow a thick skin, and workshops are a great place to accumulate your first protective layers. They’re also just great fun and an easy way to make writing friends. Nothing, to my mind, is more wonderful than a workshop.

Who should young writers be reading?

Young writers should read whatever writing they’re organically attracted to. If you like fantasy, read fantasy. If you like mystery, read mystery. If you like queer Gothic memoirs, read queer Gothic memoirs (Carmen Maria Machado’s latest book, In the Dream House, is a great place to start). Find whatever writer gives you permission to write like you want to write, like you’d naturally write if you were born in a cave. For me, that writer was George Saunders. Reading him for the first time in college really opened up a lot of possibility for me. I was like: Wait, literary writing can be weird and funny and gross? That realization was big—but my realization is not going to be every writer’s realization. The important thing is to keep reading—new stuff, old stuff, stuff in genres you’ve never read—so that you can find the writers who speak to you.

What topics would you like to see more young people writing about?

I don’t think young people should concern themselves with topics and themes so much as what fascinates or obsesses them. There’s the saying “write what you know,” which I think really means write about the people, places, and events that you feel emotionally closest too. Write what you love or hate, write what you have feelings about. The truth of what you think and feel— even if it seems irrelevant to the larger social/political/cultural/etc. happenings of the larger world—will likely resonate with readers more than if you artificially manufacture a story around a predetermined theme. So, to answer the question in another way: I think young writers should write about their own experience, whatever that may be.

What are you working on now?

I’ve started a novel that takes place in Wichita, where I grew up, and which follows the friendship of two young girls as they fall in and out of love—with their families, with Judaism, with men, with Kansas, and with each other.