Erin
Stalcup: Sincere thanks for your recent visit to the University of North Texas,
where you not only read from your incredible novel-in-progress, but also
conducted a publishing workshop that gave students valuable professional
advice. And, thank you for agreeing to answer a few follow-up questions about
your visit.
Hannah
Tinti: I had such a great time at UNT. The teachers, the students, everyone was
amazing. I feel like I not only made connections there, I made friends. So it
was fun to share a bit of the new book, and I felt very honored to read for you
all, and to be asked to come down and visit Denton, which is now one of my favorite
places.
ES:
At dinner before your reading, you weren’t certain whether to read from The Good Thief, or from your new novel,
which you’ve nearly finished but haven’t yet named. Everyone was thrilled to
hear the new work, so thank you for being brave enough to, as you said, make
yourself vulnerable as a writer. Your main character has been shot twelve times
throughout his life, and the book tells the story of each bullet wound. I
admired several things about the chapter you chose to read: you evocatively
portrayed the landscape where I was born and raised, Northern Arizona; you made
every single page riddled with suspense (not just the obvious suspense in that
we all knew someone would be shot by the end, but also suspense about who he
is, how he got to this point in his life, who the other characters are, and
what’s going to happen next, to all of them); and, you create characters that
feel nearly larger than life—two Navajo men who run a hotel, a creepy guy with
“motor oil” hair and terrifying freckles, the main character, who’s driving
around with a lot of guns and seven thousand dollars, and the young girl he
meets who needs his help, who has a black eye and says she pierces her ear with
a metal loop when she wants to remember something important, and who has a purple
feather tied to the top loop and a baby held on her hip—yet, your characters
don’t ever feel like cartoons. At the bar after the reading, someone asked how
you generated such a suspenseful chapter, and you answered that writing at a
desk is dull, and whenever you feel yourself getting bored, you ask a question:
“What’s the weirdest thing that could happen next?” And then you write that
thing. But, as odd as this chapter was, full of dust storms and guns and blood
and diapers and naked people, it never felt unbelievable. Can you say a bit
about how you balance believability with excitement, strangeness, and suspense?
Do you use anything except for your gut to create characters and scenarios that
feel enthralling, but also very real?
HT:
How to make weird things feel believable—I think the devil is always in the
details. Sticking to the facts and not over-writing. You want the reader to experience
things alongside the characters, and a few well-placed, closely-observed
descriptions, along with one or two facts will make them relax and trust you. Then
you can take them anywhere.
Starting
from real-life experience also helps. I once traveled through the four corners,
as my character does in the chapter I read. I was caught in a terrible
dust-storm, like in the story. And I was also forced to stop at a strange motel
run by Navajos. There wasn’t a gun-fight, but it was definitely the kind of
place where I could have been murdered. So I had that experience to draw from.
As
for the gut question—yes, I trust my gut most of the time. It’s a bit like
using a divining rod. I’ll get inspired by things I see and experience that
spark the idea and get me to sit down at the computer, but it’s my gut that
leads me from sentence to sentence.
ES:
You also told us at the bar that you hadn’t always been a shooter, but you’ve
been learning how to fire guns in order to understand your main character. What
other kinds of preparation work have you had to do for your writing—either for
this novel, or for Animal Crackers,
or for The Good Thief? Another way of
asking this question might be: how has your art changed your life, how has
writing left the boundaries of the page and entered your actual days, how has
it made you do things and learn things you wouldn’t have otherwise? Feel free
to answer as literally or loosely as you wish.
HT:
There is a constant crossing of my real life and my writing life. I do research
for anything I want to make happen on the page. The factual details help the reader
to believe in you, which is an important aspect of writing I often talk to my
students about. It’s our job to convince the reader that we know what we’re
doing, and to keep the reader interested, so they don’t “get out of the car”
(i.e. put down the book).
Sometimes
I discover something in the real world, and it bleeds into the writing (like
vampire squids or resurrection men), sometimes it starts on the page, and bleeds
into my real life (like learning how to shoot a double-barrel shotgun). For
example: I’m currently teaching a writing class after hours in the Museum of Natural History. To prep for this, I
read a history of the Museum, DINOSAURS IN THE ATTIC by Douglas Preston, which
chronicles many of the exhibits. I also spent countless hours exploring every
inch of the building. Now I’m pretty sure my next project is going to circle
around the idea of museums. I can’t talk too much about it, but I’ve become obsessed.
Every week I go to the museum and stare at Apatosaurus bones and dioramas of
the African Koodoo. That’s what happens to most writers, I think. You come
across something that strikes a chord and then it infiltrates every part of
your life and you bore everyone you know by talking incessantly about it and
then you write about it until you are exhausted and have worked it out of your
system. I suppose it is a bit like falling in love.
ES:
Well said—I think you’re exactly right about that feeling, that obsession and
elation.
In
his introduction to your reading, Andy Briseño accurately said that you’re a
master at both “creating and curating” fiction. Not only are you a brilliant
writer, but your editing has also made the literary world a better place—thank
goodness One Story exists. Your
magazine’s mission to “save the short story” seems to be working! Several of us
here at UNT are working on novels, myself included, after spending a long time
studying the shorter form. As exciting as it is for me to try to learn how to
write a novel, I have to admit, the short story is the form I most adore. Can
you say a bit about the differences between the two forms—the pleasures of
writing and reading each, the different ways they challenge and reward us?
HT:
The magic of the short story is that you can sit down and read it from start to
finish. In just 10 minutes, you can have a complete artistic experience.
Stories are also easier to re-read than novels, and each re-read reveals
something new and teaches you something. It’s like taking an engine apart and
then putting it back together. You keep doing it until you know all the parts
and how each part plays a role and makes the car run. As for the writing
experience—the language is tighter, more like a poem, and every sentence is
scrutinized and needs a reason to be there. It’s all about compression.
A
novel gives an author more freedom to explore and to spend time with the
characters. You use the heart of the book to branch out and create an entire
world. The language is looser, and by that I mean you don’t have to cut so
much. But novels can be very challenging to write, because of the time
commitment. They are also harder to hold in your head all at once. Sometimes you
can see the author losing steam on the page, because the original idea has
faded. A truly great novel, one that keeps the reader happily “in the car” all
the way is a rare experience, and usually works because the author has worked
meticulously on the structure and pacing. This is usually what makes a good
story, too.
So
whatever your poison, story or novel, my advice is: nail the structure. Take
your favorite novels and stories apart, examine what is going on, chapter by
chapter, paragraph by paragraph and sentence by sentence. Learn the framework,
then bend it to fit your own work.
ES:
Sincere thanks for your visit, and for giving us more of your thoughts here. We
are all so grateful for your generosity.
HT: Thanks to you and everyone at UNT. I had a wonderful
time. Texas
Forever!
Hannah Tinti’s short story collection,
Animal
Crackers, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the
PEN/Hemingway Award. Her best-selling novel,
The Good Thief, is a
New
York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library
Association’s Alex Award, winner of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize,
and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award. Hannah is
also co-founder and editor-in-chief of
One Story magazine, and
received the 2009 PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in editing. Recently, she
joined the Public Radio program, Selected Shorts, as their Literary
Commentator. For more information, visit
www.hannahtinti.com.
