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Anything you could share about your writing routine? Not looking for a guide, just a curiosity.

it's messy and exhausting and inefficient. routine is just trying to be in the story as much as I can. lots of meditating, probably ten hours of thinking to every hour writing and fifty pages drafted for every 1 page of real prose.

there's a wavelength, or mode, or vein you can hit in which everything in your life reflects the fiction back at you, where even when you're not writing, what you see/hear/encounter in the world are rearranged versions of the fiction you are writing. my routine is basically finding that mode and trying to remain in it as much as possible, so the story never stops unfurling.

Why the name Ira? Just something I think about.

somewhere along the way it became my go-to name for a certain kind of ex boyfriend...something about the three letters/two vowels expresses that sensitive, not a bad guy, but ultimately too wrapped up in his own version of things kind of character. it's a kind of synesthesia, the way I choose names. wonder if other writers are the same?

would jacob strane vote for graham platner in the maine senate primaries?

🤐

when you first started your career as a writer, how did you bet on yourself? was there ever any doubt? I feel late to the game but have stories to tell (I'm in my late 20s), trained in another field altogether...how did you/do you get through the self doubt? I want to bad to tell the stories inside of my head, but the world makes me feel like I need to be more "reasonable" and work in accounting or something lol

I didn't really have a career until the book was published...before the book I was in grad school, so a student rather than a professional. when the book sold I'd only been published a handful of times in small lit journals that maybe paid $50 but mostly didn't pay at all. I had long accepted the idea of my writing paying nothing, ever. the career I seemed to be working toward was as a teacher of english comp/low level university courses. I assumed I'd end up an adjunct like most of my grad school peers, which was bad financially but better than most any other job because I knew I could write and teach at the same time. I don't really know how to give advice to any aspiring writer who doesn't have the same drive...for me, writing is the priority and always has been. if I don't do it, I become unwell so social pressure to be more normie doesn't really factor in. it's like if you lived in a world where you had to sleep every evening but most everyone else could somehow get by without it...you understand that you are different from the others and life would be easier if you didn't have to do this thing but none the less you need to do it or else you will get sick. self-doubt is an internal thing, inner voices talking...very possible to get a hold on that but I have no straightforward advice. therapy? idk I don't want to be too dismissive; I know it's hard. I'm very grateful I've managed to carve out a life for myself in which I get to write as much as I do, but I've always treated it as more important than anything else--friends family money health god reality. maybe that is the secret? I don't know. this is cliche advice I do think if you can do anything else and be fulfilled, you should do that other thing instead, because devoting your life to writing is very alienating and usually not financially smart. you doom yourself one way or another...

Hey ker! I’m currently reading Fox by Joyce Carol Oates and I keep wondering how you would feel about this book. Have you read anything by this author before? And out of curiosity, are you still only reading books by deceased people?

haven't read the book but it's been asked about a couple of times one two

I think it's still mostly dead people...I read julie buntin's novel that's coming out in july and liked that a lot. I've reread some by living writers. but in my heart I'm very averse to contemporaries right now. maybe in a few years I'll be able to engage with them again, idk.

authored-evidence

i just watched guinevere (1999) after seeing it on your mdv reading list and all i can say is wow wow wow. jean smart's monologue, the scene where harper finally picks up the camera and takes her first photograph of a crumpled, pathetic connie at the wheel in LA, the tentative walk, then run she breaks into when she leaves him at the motel parking lot, "the connie special"... there's so much in that film that moved me and really spoke to me, much like your writing has!

have you looked into the life and work of theresa duncan? she was an early video game designer, writer, and blogger. she created these very rich, narrative driven CD-ROMS for girls in the 90's that were kind of these incredible windows into girlhood. she also wrote on a blog called the wit of the staircase. very compelling prose and a distinctive voice. a bizarre, tragic end to her story.

anyways, it made me think of some of your writing here and elsewhere relating to online presence/haunting the internet/picking at the eternal knee-scab that is girlhood!!

hope you are doing well and i look forward to whatever you create next!

yes guinevere is good! I remember around when metoo started sarah polley wrote something about being around weinstein as it was getting made, and her subsequent decision to stop acting. interesting to watch it with that in your mind. I haven't heard of theresa duncan, but this is great to discover! this is a very nice message, thank you <3

authored-evidence

this is the sarah polley essay I was thinking of. I didn't remember that it also has this prophetic line about metoo:

that line has always struck me very hard because it's essentially what happened if you mark what happened to a.heard as the death knell of metoo. I'm very drawn to that phrase "noisy sisterhood" and what it can suggest.

Hi did you have any hand in choosing who would read mdv in the audio book? this is how at first i consumed the book and i personally loved the voice. when it came to her narrating stranes voice though, i decided to switch to reading.

I was sent a short list of actresses and asked for my opinion and I think I said grace seemed like she'd be the best--she'd narrated an alice hoffman novel and done a good job with that. I really like her voices for the men!

i just watched guinevere (1999) after seeing it on your mdv reading list and all i can say is wow wow wow. jean smart's monologue, the scene where harper finally picks up the camera and takes her first photograph of a crumpled, pathetic connie at the wheel in LA, the tentative walk, then run she breaks into when she leaves him at the motel parking lot, "the connie special"... there's so much in that film that moved me and really spoke to me, much like your writing has!

have you looked into the life and work of theresa duncan? she was an early video game designer, writer, and blogger. she created these very rich, narrative driven CD-ROMS for girls in the 90's that were kind of these incredible windows into girlhood. she also wrote on a blog called the wit of the staircase. very compelling prose and a distinctive voice. a bizarre, tragic end to her story.

anyways, it made me think of some of your writing here and elsewhere relating to online presence/haunting the internet/picking at the eternal knee-scab that is girlhood!!

hope you are doing well and i look forward to whatever you create next!

yes guinevere is good! I remember around when metoo started sarah polley wrote something about being around weinstein as it was getting made, and her subsequent decision to stop acting. interesting to watch it with that in your mind. I haven't heard of theresa duncan, but this is great to discover! this is a very nice message, thank you <3

It’s interesting to me that you describe Vanessa’s parents as benign, does that hold for after S? Because V’s mom seemed so toxic and massively mishandled it.

this kind of reading always strikes me as very judgmental--I think we understand the idea of mothers being held to high (impossible) standards and being the recipients of disproportionately intense criticism compared to fathers, but it's usually others doing so in our minds--hard to catch ourselves when we're in the midst of throwing those kinds of stones--and this is just fiction, so it's whatever, you're free to hurl whatever you like--but I wonder too how much of the reaction to v's mother is self-soothing, i.e. the idea that "my mother would never react that way because my mother loves me" or "I would never react that way because I am/will be a good mother"--to that idea I just kind of grimace and agree, so as not to shatter the dream--it is a very cruel world we live in, and it's important not to reveal the depths of its cruelty to one before she is ready <3

you might want to look up Amia Srinivasan's “Sex as Pedagogical Failure”

been on the srinivasan train since her review of the incest diary...she is very good and does seem to get it. her book is good, I like this interview, especially the part about feeling discomfort with her own embodiment and her youthful longing for disembodiment altogether, and most recently really liked this essay on psychoanalysis. yes she is good and everyone here should read her.

is the lack of features from vanessa’s father meant to symbolize an emotionally neglectful relationship or distance between them or is he just not a super involved character outside of simply being her dad? if it’s the latter, do you think vanessa’s attraction to strane is initially influenced by the lack of connection to her initial father figure and a search for one? ive read the book 3 or 4 times and it kills me more each time.

I always say both parents were consciously characterized as bland, and the parent-child relationships written as benign...I didn't like the idea of the question of "why" (wye) being easily answered by "well look at her dad/mom." that felt part too easy, uninteresting to me personally, and in the case of mother-daughter relationship, something I thought had already been done very well in another novel with a very similar storyline (amy and isabelle by elizabeth strout). so I wouldn't encourage the daddy issue interpretation, but I do understand it.

Hi K.E.R.! I wanted to ask about Vanessa’s executive dysfunction. It struck me that it predates Strane, and V reads very much to me as having ADHD (later compounded by trauma). Was this deliberate?

that was deliberate to a certain extent...I wouldn't diagnose her with adhd the way I might with c-ptsd only because as a human with limited experience and limited knowledge, I'm less certain what adhd truly is compared to a trauma disorder, but I liked the idea of readers making the connection and thinking it through. it "felt right." I'm very interested in adding to character and story that kind of subtle texture of things not fully articulated, as a way to involve the reader and make the experience of the text more immersive. maybe even participatory? just very interested in methods of raising the stakes for the reader.

Hi Ker!

I saw here and on substack that you have several MDV drafts, including one where S. has a daughter! and now I’m dying of curiosity 😭

Do you plan to publish any of these drafts, or are they available somewhere? Or is it something you’d prefer to keep to yourself?

I hope I’m not being impolite! I just wanted to say that I love your writing, and I absolutely love the “The Trickster Girls” texts.

Kisses! 💕

not impolite! there's more mdv-writing than you can imagine, lots of different versions of him...nothing is very publishable, much of it shit on the sentence level. it's essentially an archive for me to pull from and play around with, maybe a kind of engine or generator. I can search the drafts for a keyword and see what comes up, try to spark a new idea from the results--a sentence from 2004, a paragraph from 2012. not sure if that makes much sense, but yes keeping it for myself is for the best, at least for now.

Hi Kate!

I just finished reading the book and, wow, at some points i felt my heart break, it was so palpable, like you were bleeding onto the pages.

But i have to ask: Is Vanessa a sapphic woman? There were a few moments when i thought "Girl 🌈?" and i kept thinking about that possibility.

Xoxo!

the possibility is deliberately put there, yes--but the unexpressed, unacknowledged, unexplored nature is a defining part it--I'm interested in the idea of the male dominator heterosexual narrative stomping into a teenage girl's life before she's found her footing, and thus taking over, blocking her from other paths she might've, in another, freer life, followed--interested too in the ghosts of the other narrative strands being felt in fleeting moments--I feel immense sadness when I think about this

Hii Kate! Just curious if you've seen the recent film Sorry, Baby? Such a great trauma portrayal.

I haven't but I've heard from a lot of people that it's very good!

ker, where hath you gone?

also, is it too late join diaries undone? i ponder for weeks before extending my online presence, and in this case the pondering made me too late.

I know 🫥🫣 I'm avoiding this place! the diaries undone place too...idk why exactly, something to do with writing a lot recently and wanting to put all the vibrant alive stuff in the draft rather than risk putting too much here/elsewhere. oh the balance is ridiculous to maintain! but I will be back here & reshare a link to the dfos/diaries undone space once I'm in a more generous spot. in the meantime I've been posting a little on substack notes and daily-ish on bluesky--low effort but comfy, cozy. I'm girlfaust on bsky if anyone's interested but obviously no pressure to follow me there or anywhere...

I am very all over the place always but always at least in one place and if you ever wanna know where exactly, I will most likely share 🦭 big affection to anyone out there who gets it. being nomadic online just makes one feel safe, yknow?

on the topic of community, I made a new space:

diaries undone

not sure how much this might appeal to us...feels similar in some ways to a discord but less overwhelming and much more isolated. might be a good place for you all to talk, get to know one another and feel cautiously secure as it's invite-only and the people hosting/running/designing the larger "dfos" network seem likeminded and understand the importance of small trustworthy spaces.

anyway, feel free to sign up, poke around, and make a post, or many posts! I might go on a posting spree in there tonight.

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