We asked the fiction writers from our Paradox issue about the spaces that influence their writing, delving into their ideal writing conditions, creative rituals, and inspiring musical and literary works. Read on to learn more about Robert Frankel, author of “Mine and the Other,” Katharine Tyndall, author of “Parasite’s Grief,” Jeremy Broyles, author of “Trash Fish,” and Zachary A. Bakht, author of “The First Question They Ask in Heaven.” Make sure to check out their work in Volume 11: PARADOX!
Robert Frankel, author of “Mine and the Other”
What is (are) your favorite creative ritual(s)? In other words, what habits/practices help you access your creativity?
I like writing as the sun rises. I wake up before or at dawn and make a pot of tea. The process—steeping and watching the color bloom—is almost meditative and puts me in the right mindset. I feed the tea pet and then get to work.
Where did you create your piece(s) for Vol. 11? Did your chosen spaces influence your work(s), and if so, how?
I wrote the first draft of this piece in 2015, when I was stationed in Germany. I had a barely furnished apartment with an Ikea desk positioned at the window and supported by a keyboard stand (the movers had apparently lost the desk’s legs somewhere over the Atlantic). I don’t know if the space influenced the piece, but it was very conducive to reading and writing.
What other media (music, movies, books, etc.) influenced your work(s) for Vol. 11?
I think two of the most-felt literary influences in the piece are James Salter’s short story collection Last Night, to which I find myself continuously returning, and one specific line from the first chapter of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pnin (on the New Yorker’s fiction podcast, Deborah Triesman describes it as a “Nabokovian sleight of hand”). But what I think was most influential for “Mine and the Other” were the countless pieces of art I was seeing in central European art museums, major and minor. The act of seeing, analyzing, and even extrapolating from the pieces on display proved to be the germinating seed of the story.
What jumpstarts your creativity when you’re feeling blocked?
Physical motion sometimes helps me through blocks when I’m drafting. It can be as simple as doing a set of push-ups or going on a walk or run. Reading fiction is also very helpful: Another author’s words can coax out my own.
What advice do you have for artists starting out in your medium?
Follow your curiosities—in life, literature, and whatever—and write about them. When drafting, quality is a third draft problem. Learn to celebrate your successes, however small, and especially your failures, because that means you’re actually doing the work. And, of course, read, read, read. Not all readers are writers, but all writers are readers.
In Letters to a Young Writer, Colum McCann leaves a note to the reader that has never left me: “…if you find—as you should—that the second book is harder [to write] than the first, then you are the writer you have always wanted to become.”
Katharine Tyndall, author of “Parasite’s Grief”
What is (are) your favorite creative ritual(s)? In other words, what habits/practices help you access your creativity?
A lot of my work is inspired by reading non-fiction. Boring as a ritual, I know. But nothing gets me going like a book about non-human intelligences or plant agency. I like to get drawn in by a concept and let a story emerge from it. Except for poetry - I can usually only write poetry when I’m in a bad mood. I don’t have any particular rituals to bring that on, it happens often enough on its own.
Where did you create your piece(s) for Vol. 11? Did your chosen spaces influence your work(s), and if so, how?
I write everything at my desk, looking out at the magnolia tree in my backyard and the birds that live there. I’m very drawn to the natural world and it seeps into everything I write.
What other media (music, movies, books, etc.) influenced your work(s) for Vol. 11?
Part of the inspiration was What A Mushroom Lives For by Michael J. Hathaway. It’s a fantastic book about fungal life and non-human agency. Visually, the landscapes and creatures of the story are influenced by the Ernst Haeckel drawings of siphonophores. But most importantly, the story is influenced by lichen!
What jumpstarts your creativity when you’re feeling blocked?
Going for walks with no phone. When you can’t access the internet for an hour you have to entertain yourself by thinking. I try to go for a walk every day and use the time to process and think about stories, or let ideas come to me. I don’t force it.
What advice do you have for artists starting out in your medium?
If you hate the stuff you wrote last year, take it as a sign that you’ve gotten better :)
Jeremy Broyles, author of “Trash Fish”
What is (are) your favorite creative ritual(s)? In other words, what habits/practices help you access your creativity?
I’m not a very artsy artist. Writing, for me, is work. When it comes time to get the story out of my head, I sit down and do the work. I don’t have specific creative rituals; more so, I have rules. For example, I am a night writer through and through. None of my best work gets done before midnight. By the time three or four in the morning rolls around, I’m the most productive version of myself. I explain to people that I’ve seen a great many sunrises, but almost all of them have been because I simply didn’t go to bed the night before.
Where did you create your piece(s) for Vol. 11? Did your chosen spaces influence your work(s), and if so, how?
I write all my stories in the same space—at my laptop in my office. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not sexy. But neither are my processes. Storytelling—again, for me—isn’t a creative endeavor. I feel compelled, for reasons I cannot fully understand nor articulate, to tell the story that is currently haunting me. If anything, then, writing is exorcism.
What other media (music, movies, books, etc.) influenced your work(s) for Vol. 11?
This story in particular was inspired by a nonfiction science/nature book called The Ghost with Trembling Wings by Scott Weidensaul. I read it some years ago, and it has stayed with me as much as any novel. Weidensaul explores concepts like extinction, cloning, and cryptids (think the Loch Ness Monster or the chupacabra). But what is most fascinating—and heartbreaking—is the connection he draws between these elements. Maybe our cultural allure to something like Bigfoot stems from the irrevocable loss we feel when we remember—or, potentially, learn about—the passenger pigeon (extinct in 1914) or the thylacine (extinct in 1936). The knowledge that these weird and wonderful creatures that used to be real and alive are gone for good leaves behind a longing. Within “Trash Fish,” I accessed that longing most acutely within the character of Tuffy, and Weidensaul’s book certainly served as a particularly pointed influence.
What jumpstarts your creativity when you’re feeling blocked?
Wordcount. Another unsexy answer, I know. But if I find myself struggling with a scene/etc., I will put my head down and grind. I will put words on the page, by god, regardless of how shitty they are individually or collectively. I take heart in two particular spots. First, seeing that wordcount grow feels productive, and I can often harness that momentum to move me forward through the story. Second, I remember C.J. Cherryh’s words that serve as a balm to my wounded ego. “It’s perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”
What advice do you have for artists starting out in your medium?
I don’t envy someone starting out today. There are so many writers who have come before that it feels like all the stories have already been taken. Grant yourself a little grace. It’s not your job to write that 100% original, never-been-seen-before story. It’s your job to tell the best version of your story that you can. So go do that. Be aware of what has come before but don’t feel beholden to it or intimidated by it.
And no more wolves. I’m so sick of wolves showing up in every goddamned story I come across. Knock it off with the wolves.
Zachary A. Bakht, author of “The First Question They Ask in Heaven”
What is (are) your favorite creative ritual(s)? In other words, what habits/practices help you access your creativity?
I like to read before I write to get my voice back to where I want it. The first time I ever wrote was when my wife was away and I had been alone for days without speaking to another person. That put me in the right headspace, but it’s a little hard to recreate on demand. I’ll often listen to a song or two before starting. There’s usually at least one song that is inspiring any given story, and I’ll listen to it to pull those emotions back to the front of my mind.
Before I get even one word out I sit and tap incessantly. Sometimes for fifteen to twenty minutes. It’s a nervous tick but it helps me think. I used to play drums (poorly). It’s a very annoying habit to anyone around me. Drinking, of course, but that’s cliche. I always used to pour a beer before sitting down. These days I’ve graduated to whisky.
Where did you create your piece(s) for Vol. 11? Did your chosen spaces influence your work(s), and if so, how?
I wrote it on the same purple couch I’m sitting on now, the same one pictured above. Same couch but a different room. That was my last apartment. I wrote my first story about seven years ago and three or four homes ago. When I first moved I feared it would affect me—I needed my chair, my table, my view of the West Hills from the long row of windows. I graduated to a desk and a better view at the next place. Same chair. Then I moved again, from the city to the suburbs. Different desk. Better chair. Way worse view. Eventually I moved to the couch. I switched from one laptop to another, Word to Google Docs. What I’ve found is most of that doesn’t matter. I just need a door I can close behind me. A place to be alone for a bit. It’s more about my headspace than my physical space. Consistency in ritual and process has kept me steady.
What other media (music, movies, books, etc.) influenced your work(s) for Vol. 11?
This was the first story I wrote after the longest layoff I’d ever taken from writing. It was during Covid lockdowns and I was writing a quick, terrible, short story a day to post on Reddit to drive traffic to my website. It didn’t work at all and burned me out badly. I hated what I was writing and I was writing for a result, not for passion. I took a short break and for the first time in my life saw a future where I didn’t write.
I read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk in that time and felt inspiration that I desperately needed. What stood out to me was that there are no rules—you can find any voice and say anything you want any way that you want, so long as it’s interesting. Sounds stupid, but I’m not sure I had fully realized that before. I sat down and wrote in a completely different voice than I’d ever tried. All I had was a slight premise. I wrote freely, without worrying if it was something people would like. Second person, present tense is not exactly a format people are used to, but my few readers at the time (those poor friends and family who’d been subjected to hundreds of thousands of words of awful prose and cliche characters) reacted overwhelmingly positively and told me this was my best stuff. So thank you, Chuck.
What jumpstarts your creativity when you’re feeling blocked?
Usually something bad happens to me and I take a quick break from writing to get my life in order. When I return, I return with an enthusiasm which is hard to match.
Music, too. It all comes back to music for me. I believe with all my heart that music is the ultimate human art. It is our first format for storytelling. It is unique to us. If I had even a little musical ability it is what I would pursue fully and entirely. When I write, I am emulating what I hear. I am trying to capture and manipulate emotions the way music does. Nearly every story I write is inspired by a song or a line from a song.
What advice do you have for artists starting out in your medium?
The fundamental and most crucial advice for any writer—read a lot, write even more—is so obvious and well-discussed that I won’t spend a lot of time on it. If you’re not reading all the time and writing as often as you can, you’re probably not reading this, either.
My advice would be don’t do things for the result. Do them because you love to do them. Because you have to. If you’re writing to get validation from other people, you’re probably going to give up, because that is hard to come by. You have to do it because there are stories in your head demanding that you write them. Fall in love with the process and forget about the results.
If you want tactical advice, it would be to finish those early short stories. Your first story is probably going to suck. (Your tenth too, but I don’t want to depress you.) Don’t give up on it just because it sucks. Finish it. Learn how to write an ending. Get practice getting from that awesome first line you had to the end of the story. I know writers who give up on every story they start because they think they sound dumb and the idea doesn’t seem as attractive once they really get into the work of giving it life. You won’t learn anything beyond writing a cool opening line that way. Struggle through the middle. Build some characters. Breathe some of yourself into them. Then kill them. Find your way to the ending. Do it again and again and again and I promise at some point you will look back and realize how much better you have become. Accept that you will feel like an imposter at the start. You will read your own writing back and cringe. Every writer does that. Write anyway.
