On March 16th at noon, author Michelle Wildgen will provide the second REDTalk at The Wise Restaurant and Bar. REDTalks provide people with a chance to learn from a master in craft in a relaxed, intimate atmosphere while enjoying a delicious lunch. Michelle is the author of three novels, most recently Bread & Butter, a novel about three brothers operating an upscale restaurant. About the book, Kirkus Review said, “Wildgen plates one dazzling phrase after another on nearly every page.” She’s also the executive editor at Tin House Magazine and co-founder of the Madison Writer’s Studio. Her talk will use specific examples of what has and has not worked for her as she discusses guidelines that can help a writer to devise a novel's essential situation, tweak it to heighten its tensions, and find ways to pay attention to characters and situations so that it all builds into a cohesive, meaningful story.
More information about the REDTalk is available here.
Recently we sat down with Michelle to talk about writing, advice, and pitfalls.
ALL: How did your writing life begin? Do you have an origin story?
MW: I always wrote just for fun: stories of innocent-looking but inherently evil unicorns, novelizations of Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” video, romances among sixth graders in a world famous rock and roll band; I am not joking about any of these, sadly. Then when I was in high school my parents heard about a creative writing camp and thought I might kind of enjoy it. And for some reason the way the teachers approached writing there was mind-altering to me. Maybe it was the first time I experienced workshops instead of high school lit classes, or the breadth of writing they had us read (this was where I encountered Ann Beattie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Raymond Carver), but I just thought, This is it, I’m doing this, there is a ton to learn and the prospect of learning it is so exciting. They were also so practical about it—they scrapped the get-rich-by-writing idea right away, and as a result I felt freed to just have writing in my life. I suspect a lot of it was the exposure to different and more interesting kinds of fiction, the sheer fun of the whole enterprise. Now I wonder if that camp still exists….
ALL: People seem very interested in a writer's processes. When you are in the midst of a project, what does your process look like?
MW: It changes, and right now it is mostly a scramble to block out lengths of time when I can keep my head in a project long enough to do actual work. Sometimes an hour or two is enough. But I’m in a revision spot in which I need to live for longer, and the other work I do can make that difficult. So sometimes I flee and go away for a weekend to write, or move from my dining table to my bedroom so I can't distract myself by making endless cups of tea. I can’t work in coffee shops but the quiet room at the library can be useful. Whatever I do, I usually need some way to return to the head space; reading a little work I love, doing the smaller line edits on the work in progress just to get the gears moving, and after a bit it starts to open up again.
ALL: What is the worst piece of writing advice you've received?
MW: This isn't actually advice, but in grad school I once workshopped a short story in which, in passing, a character mentioned she had cut through the neighbors’ yards on her way home instead of going around the block. And one of my classmates wrote, “I don't like this. For one thing, it’s trespassing.” So I guess it is advice for life, from a random guy in grad school who has a thing about trespassing.
ALL: You're a teacher and editor as well as a novelist. How does that work inform your art? What is your favorite part of being an editor or teacher?
MW: Teaching has made me a better editor, and I think vice versa. In class I had to articulate so many things I was sort of assuming before, because I might be working with writers who were brand new to the idea of writing craft, and that was so helpful to me because I had to think through my own expectations and good and bad habits. Editing has always been good for me in terms of receiving feedback. No one enjoys hearing their work doesn’t come across as they hoped it did, but working as an editor has made me see critical feedback in much more of a craftsperson light and less as something that determines my worth as a human and writer. Teaching has helped me as a writer by making me read new things and unpack familiar ones in a way I might not otherwise. It is also useful when I’m struggling with my own writing and I remember that what I so blithely tell my lovely students to do is exactly what I need to do here. The only way in which these disciplines don't help my writing is in the extensive time I spend on teaching and editing, and the way I sometimes have to clear other people’s stories out of my head before I can write new ones.
ALL: Your upcoming talk is about the process of setting up your story. What pitfalls can this help a writer avoid? Can this apply to both "planners" and "seat-of-the-pants-ers”?
MW: I think so! I’m not much of a planner, but I’ve learned to try to plan a bit as it works for me, and to set myself up a little better than I used to. There is no such thing as avoiding revision altogether, because the gulf between thought/intention and what you physically put on the page is vast. And the writing process changes the original idea, opens it up in interesting ways that you should listen to, not squelch. But you can set yourself up to productively use and question those changes, to revise with more purpose and less flailing. Not NO flailing, but less. It’s not so much about forcing yourself to fit into a little vessel you designed before you began. It’s more about learning what questions you can ask of your work, how to evaluate what you're doing on the page and why.
To learn more about Michelle Wildgen and to her work, check out her website and look for her books at your local independent bookstores.
