Author Interview - Andrew Porter
Short Story Collection, The Theory of Light and Matter
Winner of the Flannery O' Connor Award in Short Fiction
Published by The University of Georgia Press - October 15th, 2008

Author´s Website: http://www.andrewporterwriter.com/

Buy on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Light-Matter-Stories-Flannery/dp/0820332097/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210715450&sr=1-2

Q: Thanks for making the time for this interview, Andrew. This must be a busy and exciting week for you with your official publication date on October 15th. Do you have any events or readings planned?

A: Yes, I'll be doing my first reading in Milledgeville, Georgia (Flannery O'Connor's hometown) the day after the book is released and then another in Decatur the following day. After that, I'll be returning to Texas to read in San Antonio and Houston, and then reading in various parts of the country throughout the rest of theyear. It's going to be a lot of traveling, a very busy year, but I'm looking forward to it.

Q: Andrew, can you tell me more about your background as a writer? When did you begin writing? What series of events prompted you to pursue an MFA? How did the program at The University of Iowa help to develop you as a writer?

A: Well, I wasn't one of those writers who knew at age ten that this is what he wanted to do with his life. I didn't even consider the possibility of pursuing a career in writing until my last few years of college, when I started taking some creative writing classes, and I don't think I really began to think about myself as writer until I entered Iowa a couple of years later. It's hard for me to say what prompted this decision—the decision to pursue an MFA. Probably the usual reasons: I didn't have the self-confidence at that age to just write on my own without a structured environment, and also I think I noticed that a lot of the writers I admired at the time had gone through an MFA program at some point, and so it seemed like a logical path. And of course, I also wanted to get to know other writers, and that was probably one of the best things about Iowa. I mean, I certainly had some amazing teachers there, but I think it was the environment itself that changed me the most—going to readings every week, hanging out in bars after workshop and talking about books, living in a house (as I did) with three other writers. For two years of my life, everything in my life seemed to revolve around writing, and so it's hard to imagine what my life would have been like had I not gone through this experience. I know the MFA route isn't for everyone, but for me, it was a necessary step, especially at such a young age.

Q. I guess what made me most curious about your collection is wanting to know where these stories come from? When I finished the collection, I felt as if I had been introduced to a new circle of friends. Some, I can guess, have an autobiographical slant, but others made me wonder. Can you talk about your inspiration and how you shape a story from an idea to a final draft?

A. Typically, my stories start with an image, and then grow out ofthat image. Sometimes the image will be of something I've observed in my own life or something that has stayed with me over the years. I tend to believe that there's usually a reason why certain images stay with us, and so I write to discover what it is about that image that interests me. For example, the title story in the collection grew out of a memory I had of sitting in a classroom in college, watching the snow falling outside the window when I was supposed to be taking an exam. I don't know why this image stayed with me, but at the time I didn't really question it. I just started describing it, and before I knew it I was writing from the perspective of a young woman sitting in a college classroom, trying to complete a nearly impossible physics equation. After that, the story just turned into something else entirely. It became pure fiction, but I think I needed that small piece of reality in order to get going. As for the drafting process, it's always different. Some stories reveal themselves right away, while others might take months or years to discover. Every story seems to present a new set of problems and requires a different amount of time and effort. I think when I was young, I used to believe that writing short stories would get easier as I got older, but I don't think it has. I might have a little more confidence now—confidence that I can get the story from point A to point B—but that doesn't necessarily make the journey itself any easier.

Q: I also enjoyed the "relationship" themes, which varied widely from traditional American families to non-traditional families, to teenagers with dysfunctional parents to exchange students as surrogate children, to characters who seemed to try to fit together like mismatched puzzle pieces, yet retained lasting emotional ties with each other. Did this just happen during the telling of the stories, or when you chose the stories for the collection did you try to group them around a particular theme?

A: The theme of "family" is certainly prominent in the collection, but it wasn't something that I thought about ahead of time. I just looked at the stories I had on my computer at the time and tried to pick the ones that seemed to fit together thematically and tonally. I could have easily made the collection twice as long if I just included every story I had on my hard drive at the time, but I really wanted the book, as a whole, to have a sense of unity to it. Some of the stories that resonated the most for me happened to be stories about families, and so I think that once I decided to include a few of these stories the others fell into place.

Q: Some of the stories struck me as containing the drama and characterizations of a novel squeezed into a small, air-tight container, while "Skin" was so brief it reminded me of a song. Would you consider lengthening any of the stories into a novella or novel?

A: I've toyed around with this idea and even made some attempts to expand some of these stories into longer works, but I usually find myself getting stuck when I try to do this. I think that when you finish a story, and you feel like that story is complete, it becomes very hard to mess with it after that, to turn it into something else. Also, I think you have to feel compelled to return to the characters in the story, to want to know more about them, and usually when I finish a story I don't feel that way. I sometimes feel like I still have certain questions about them, but there's also a part of me that likes leaving these questions unanswered.

Q: I admired a number of your story endings. For lack of a better term you nail them down with a certain finality, and as a reader I found myself thinking, "wait, I´m not ready for this to be over." Are endings difficult to write or as effortless as you make them seem?

A: Thanks, Jennifer. That's nice of you to say. I can tell you that they're definitely not effortless, but they probably are my favorite part of the story to write. I usually write them last, after I've written and revised the bulk of the story, and usually I just let them grow organically out of what I've written so far. I try not to think too much about my endings. To me, an ending is something you have to discover intuitively, meaning, I guess, that it just has to feel right. The right line delivered at the right moment. It has a lot to do with timing, I think, and also with being aware of what a reader might be feeling at a particular moment in a story. And of course, it also has to feel final, as you said. So, I guess, in some ways, endings are pretty tricky, but I always love working on them because Iusually find that once I have my ending I know what the story is about.

Q: Can you talk about your revision process? How many drafts to get to a polished final version. Do you pare down sentences? Do you read them out loud to listen to the characters' voices?

A: My revision process varies depending on the story, but typically I write very long first drafts—sometimes fifty to sixty pages for a story that will end up being maybe fifteen to twenty. A lot of what I write in those first drafts is back story, content that helps me get to know the characters, and often times this back story never make sits way into the final draft. I realize this probably isn't the fastest way to write a story, but I find that it's easier for me to see the story once I've written everything I want to write about the characters. I like having a big, unwieldy first draft, and then slowly chipping away at it—cutting out scenes, removing unnecessary background information, condensing paragraphs, compressing sentences. The last thing I do is work on the writing itself, on the language and the rhythm of it. Sometimes this is the hardest part, but I find that if I start tinkering with that stuff too early in the process it gets harder for me to make decisions about what to cut, especially if the thing that needs to be cut is a paragraph that I've been working on for a few days.

Q: Can you tell me more about your working relationship with your publisher, The University of Georgia Press?

A: Sure. My experience with The University of Georgia Press has been absolutely wonderful. Everyone I've worked with there has been extremely kind and supportive. They really care about the quality of the books they put out and they spend a lot of time working with their authors to promote them. I think they see the Flannery O'Connor Award, in particular, as a way to help launch the careers of emerging writers, and so they do everything they can to make sure this happens. I really can't say enough good things about them.

Q: Who is the person who most inspired you to write and continue writing?

A: Well, I've had some amazing teachers over the years, especially at Iowa, but I think the teacher who had the biggest influence on me was David Wong Louie, one of my first creative writing professors in college. He taught me a lot about the fundamentals of writing and exposed me to a lot of great contemporary writers, but most importantly, he was the first person who actually spoke to me as if I were a writer, or at least someone who had the potential of becoming a writer. He never spoke down to me, and he took my writing very seriously, and I think his early encouragement and belief in my work is what gave me the confidence to take that next step and apply to MFA programs. Over the years, we've remained good friends, and I often tell him that if it wasn't for his faith in those early stories I wrote I probably would have never had the nerve to do this.

Q: Andrew, what´s next? Do you have any other projects in the works?

A: Yes, I have a novel in the works. It's set in Houston and it revolves around a family going through a crisis, but I'm too superstitious to say any more about it than that. I've learned over the years that as soon as I start talking about a project I box myself in, so I hope you'll forgive the vagueness of my answer.

Thanks so much, Andrew Porter, for participating in my series of interviews at Emerge - New Authors, and best wishes with the launch of your collection.

The pleasure has been all mine. This has been a lot of fun, Jennifer. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me.