Ask the Author: William Walsh
[Roxane Gay / October 11th, 2009 / Interviews ]William Walsh, author of Master, in the September issue, talks to us about bartenders, developing creative flexibility and current projects.
1. Do bartenders ever dispense useful advice?
Never once to me. But I’m sure they do. The wisdom of the bartender is too often wasted on drunken ears.
2. The last line of your story Master is really what makes this story. How did this story come about? Have you ever been forced to confront a dog in this manner? If so, did it achieve the desired result?
Nothing autobiographical in Master. But I’ve seen guys try to show up dogs and I’ve been wanting to write about that foolishness.
We’ve got a twelve-year-old Jack Russell Terrier who is a submissive urinator. He’s not an alpha and I’m not an alpha, so there’s no story there (maybe a poem).
3. What’s the last great thing you read?
I just finished Last Days by Brian Evenson and it was the most intense thing I’ve read in a long time. It really had the effect of frightening me as I read. I also just finished Sam Ligon’s new collection, Drift and Swerve, and that was pretty great, too. He presents his characters without any of the usual devices and that makes his action and portrayal of emotion very real.
4. You demonstrate a lot of range in your writing, from hybrid texts like Questionstruck to more traditional narratives. How did you develop that creative flexibility? What is your writing process?
My process is to make lots of notes on a story and type up the notes. Then I try to fit those notes into scenes. I try to take an elemental approach—so much exposition, so much descriptive action, so many character notes, so much setting, so much dialogue. When I get stuck, I look for which element is lacking or which element is overplayed. I usually resolve most problems with structural fixes. Once I’m set on a structure, I know I can finish a story.
With the derived texts, I just follow a reading interest. Recently, an editor putting together an anthology on craft asked me to work up a derived text using Aristotle’s Poetics as the source. That was a lot of fun because I wasn’t sure if I could find a hook. But I noticed a recurring use of the word “imitation” to describe the act of poetry and that opened up the text for me.
5. What are you currently working on?
I am trying to finish two stories for a collection scheduled with Keyhole Press next spring. Both stories are a bit rangy right now but I think a few cuts will open them up for me. I’m also trying to inch along two novels, one is a crime story and the other is about a guy taking a hermitage in his hometown.
I’m also working on a series of derived texts sourced from James Joyce’s work, and I’ll be presenting some of those on a panel at the &NOW Conference in October at University of Buffalo, SUNY. The panel is called “RE: Telling—Making Narratives with Borrowed Characters, Familiar Settings, Classic Plots, Mimicked Modes and Reclaimed Themes.”
6. With four children, how do you find time to write?
The kids don’t eat into the writing time. I try to work a bit in the morning before work and then at the end of the day. I also try to write during my lunch hour.