Ask the Writer: Benjamin Percy

Q: Congratulations on selling your novel, The Wilding, and your short story "April 20th, 2008," which was commissioned by Esquire. Most writers aspire to be widely read, though few end up making it, and some writers I've talked to--those who have achieved some success, at least--eye critics and readers warily. How do you feel about readers and critics? Does it change the way you write?

A:  When I first began writing in earnest, I felt a heated rush at the keyboard, wanting to get a story done, wanting to shove it in an envelope, slap on the postage, send it off to journal -- or forty or maybe even fifty -- praying that it would find a readership. These were confusing times. I wrote a story every week. I had a file on my computer -- ten pages long -- that tracked submissions. In my mailbox I would receive several rejections every day, sometimes with an encouraging note scrawled upon them. These I would tape to my office door and read over and over. I wasn't discouraged. Quite the opposite. I knew I was almost there--almost over the wall and into the castle--which only increased my manic energy, making me into a kind of story factory, a production line. Naturally, when you're working at such a pace, you cannot be wholly original every time you sit down to write. So my stories grew like an inbred family, full of recycled images, metaphors, sentences, characters. I was playing around with the similar ingredients, trying to find a recipe that worked.

I am obviously no longer that person. I cannot be. My wife would leave me. My heart would explode. And my work would undoubtedly suffer. Having readers, having critics, makes you slow down. You know you can't get away with carelessness -- you can't get away with recycling an image that appeared in a previous story -- you can't get away with following the same sort of character. Because somebody is waiting on the sidelines, ready to blow their whistle. By slowing down and understanding your weaknesses and setting challenges for yourself and trying to be constantly original, your work moves into deeper waters. 

Q: How has the democratization of technology, (i.e., write a novel in MS Word, format it in Adobe InDesign, make the cover in Photoshop, and print it at Kinko's) changed writing? Every since typewriters, authors have mused over the relationship of writing to technology. What are your thoughts on the subject?

A:  I love the idea of putting a pen to paper, of rattling away at a typewriter, but my work habits are linked irrevocably to the computer. Cutting and pasting. Footnoting. Googling. Spell-checking. Using the "find" option in a larger manuscript to hop around swiftly. There is something soulless (and dispensable) about a Dell compared to a trusty old Smith-Corona, but my muse is made of circuits and ram.

Q: In your story "The Killing," reprinted in your collection Refresh, Refresh, you make a passing reference to an anthropologist who talks about New York in the late 1980s. He calls this time "The Wilding." Writers are often captivated by a diverse range of ideas, returning in their fiction to particular concepts, ideas, or characters. How does your forthcoming novel, The Wilding (Graywolf Press), relate to these concepts--if at all?

A:  I read about this -- "the wilding" of NYC -- in 2003. I tucked it away on a backshelf of my mind and knew it would come in handy some day: the idea that we are all one step away from animalism. My novel confronts this idea (with Oregon as the setting).
 
Q: A friend recently read "Refresh, Refresh" and told me how close the fathers in the story paralleled his own experience in the Air Force. I also noticed you often write about Oregon, even when you write a different story entirely, as in "The Meltdown." Some writers insist on "what you know" and some insist complete imagination is key. What are the pros and cons of each approach to writing?

A:  'Write what you know' is that age-old maxim that everybody at once endorses and revises. I suppose I'll be clever and turn it on its head: know what you write. Yes, look to your backyard, your experiences, your family and friends and enemies for inspiration -- but don't consider yourself fenced in. If you've never worked for the circus, you're certainly not forbidden to write of a trapeze artist. Just do your homework. Watch some documentaries. Read some articles. Buy a ticket to Ringling Brothers. Interview the lion tamer and the bearded lady. Learn the language -- the tools -- the customs -- the psychology -- of the trade. Know it so well you fool your audience into believing you've lived through what your characters have lived.
 
Q: Many writers, to stay solvent, are forced to teach while they write. Do you see yourself as a teacher, a writer, or as a hybrid? What would your advice be to professors and teaching assistants who harbor dreams of writing full-time?

A: I'm the hybrid-model (without the gas efficiency or leather seats). Teaching informs my writing and writing informs my teaching. The pressure of standing before a room and giving a lecture or leading a discussion forces me daily to read a student manuscript -- or a story assigned from a textbook -- with such strenuous care that I realize things I wouldn't have otherwise. These tools I carry with me to the page. And when I'm surrounded by people who care deeply about writing -- my students, my colleagues -- I feel like I'm part of a supportive, electric community (a pleasant antidote to the lonely time I spend in the chair). If I wrote exclusively, I would go a little crazy, I think, walking around in my underwear, talking to myself, rarely shaving. And I would feel guilty as well since I approach teaching as a service, a way to give back and earn my oxygen.