Fiction
ROBERT GUFFEY INTVW BY Neil Gabriel Nanta
NRM: During these trying times, how are you holding up? Do you have anything special planned after this pandemic ends?
If all the wheels are turning, the story is making those decisions for me.
Robert Guffey: Aside from the unforeseen difficulties of teaching five English classes online, I’ve learned that—to my surprise— I’ve been subconsciously preparing for a nationwide lockdown since my birth, and that life in quarantine doesn’t affect my daily routine in any appreciable way. After the pandemic ends, I hope to make a research trip to a California lake where Frankenstein’s Monster drowned a little girl in James Whale’s 1931 film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Call it a religious pilgrimage, if you must.
its own form,” and “Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.” Of course, these are all variations on the same basic theme: “Don’t think.” If you have to think, think afterwards. That’s where the editing process comes in. I suppose the real answer to the question is that I don’t really make such decisions while the story is being written. If all the wheels are turning, the story is making those decisions for me.
NRM: What inspired you to write “Her Wounded Eyes”? RG: The character of “Wanda”—and everything she goes through over the course of the story—is based on the traumatic experiences of several different friends I had back in high school.
NRM: In “Her Wounded Eyes”, I can’t help but find a couple of interesting phrases like “dozens of stiff phalli erupting out of vaginal pockets in their protoplasmic bodies.” How do you decide what that particular phrase is going to be when you’re writing? RG: When Ray Bradbury was a struggling young writer living in a garage in Venice, CA back in the 1940s, he decided to tape a sign to his typewriter that read “DON’T THINK.” The epitaph on Charles Bukowski’s gravestone reads “DON’T TRY.” Jack Kerouac’s advice to young writers includes such pithy bon mots as “Something that you feel will find
NRM: Can you share with us some notable moments about being a lecturer? RG: It’s always satisfying when former Creative Writing students move on to bigger and better pastures and develop the confidence to share their own unique visions with the world. Some of my students have been accepted into the MFA Programs at Cal Arts and Iowa, for example. Others have moved on to become professional journalists. Several have succeeded in publishing the stories and novellas they originally workshopped in my classes. One of my students, Chris Mardiroussian, recently wrote and produced his own short film titled Il Breakup, which won the American Cinematheque’s annual independent film festival award in 2018. Knowing the behind-the-scenes difficulties he had to contend with in order to complete this film certainly raised my respect for his perseverance. He even gave me a credit at the end of film, which I probably didn’t deserve, but the thought was appreciated.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve also had several students whose stories were so good that I encouraged them to submit to professional magazines. But for some reason—and I’m not quite sure what causes this—some students seem reluctant to submit their stories for publication, even after receiving an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from their fellow students and teachers. Something prevents them from escaping the womb and taking that final leap into the real world. One student confided in me that this reticence stemmed from a fear of rejection. But if you’re a writer, you should never be afraid of rejection. What’s the worst that can happen? The editor sends you an email that says, “No thank you”? It’s not quite the same level of rejection a struggling actor or a comedian has to deal with. Based on what other students have been telling me, I suspect some budding writers are fearful of being unfairly attacked by their readers, as occurred to Isabel Fall, author of the controversial short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter”, a story I used to kick off my Literature of Science Fiction class earlier this year. Young artists should remember that, in many cases, suppression only works if you allow the negative reaction to affect you in the first place. If you have a unique vision, it’s your responsibility to share that with the world. Young writers should never self-censor or allow the ignorance of the mob to stop them from pursuing their dreams (or, in some special cases, their nightmares).
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