INTERVIEW WITH WRITER DEREK MAINE, part two
elements of writing, being a Southern writer, the podcast Alt-Write, etc
INTERVIEW WITH WRITER DEREK MAINE pt 2
This telephone interview, which was conducted on 1/20/22, has been edited for clarity and to eliminate redundancies and incomplete thoughts. Because it is a telephone interview it is conversational and therefore has the occasional roughness of thought in conversation.
JH: I wanted to talk about your writing, which Iāve read selections of online. I read it all once then I went back to peek at it more. Of plot, character, and voice, which do you think is most important to you and which is most important to this scene or niche of outsider lit, cyberwriting, etc?
DM: This feels like a trick question to me, as my book is called Characters. So it feels like Iām supposed to say ācharacter.ā First off, I want to say as a reader, I have no preference. As a reader I enjoy aspects where all three are the focus. Itās mood-based. Itās undeniable that itās voice within this moment and this scene. Itās the primary element of concern. Like, itās okay if something doesnāt have a plotāin fact thatās maybe somewhat in fashion these days, I think too much so. And I think character can kind of go to the side somewhat in favor of a strong voice, certainly when it comes to secondary and tertiary characters. With my own work I have no idea. I am not very good at thinking about it really. I know why it is, itās because when Iām writing and really getting it right, Iām in a mode that I canāt pick up right this second, or any random second, and it does feel to me like a little bit of magic, sorcery, spiritual, whatever.
I think thereās a reason that Iām calling my first book Characters. I think that itās important I kind of acknowledge that even subconsciously in a sense that for me that character is the primary element, but the caveat is that I canāt write anything until I have the voice of those characters. To me, to separate those two is more difficult. The plot is easier to separate. Thereās a lot of straight autofiction and in that case the voice and the character are kind of the same.
JH: Iāve noticed from reading your writing that especially with the more recent stuff that youāve for example read at Misery Loves Company that thereās layers of consciousness and self-consciousness that are intersecting and intertwining. It seems like that kind of falls into the character and voice thing.
DM: I think my work is self-aware and itās self-aware that it is work. Itās very aware of a reader. I get in the way a lot and whether thatās in terms of just metafiction or breaking the fourth wall or whether itās more so like a subconscious, honestly more appropriately, a consciousness pretending to be a subconscious. Behaving as if, because the real subconscious of course I wouldnāt have access to. And there are supposed to be, sometimes when it works it works, layers of me, the writer, you know? Like as a writer I argue with myself, I disagree with myself and I tend to sometimes keep that in there. And so my writing is full of doubt and I think that that can sometimes feel like two aspects of the person are talking together so maybe thatās some of the subconscious.
JH: If you have an idea for a story or youāre in the midst of writing a story and youāre talking to someone and they ask you āwhat are you writing about?ā are you apt to tell them everything or are you the type of writer who says things like āI really donāt want to talk about it because Iām in the midst of composing and if I tell you itāll diffuse the magicā?
DM: Yeah, I mean me personally I know of writers who are both ways. The people who donāt want to talk about what theyāre working on often have a very uber-moral stance about it: āYouāre ruining it!ā and I donāt agree with that, but it does happen unfortunately for me that I am the type that cannot talk about it and Iāve only gotten that way I think through making mistakes. Hereās the reason: when I talk about something Iām working on it typically means that I have a question about it, a serious question usually, and Iām talking about it because Iām writing to figure out that answer by talking aloud, and someone else is just on the other end of the conversation. Writers are usually pretty good about understanding that. My day-to-day life is with an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old and my wife. I canāt just sit there and just tell themāor my dad or mom, people Iām always withāI canāt sit there and do that. So the reason Iām like that is the times that Iāve had to talk out what I was working on the problem, I think in each case I already knew that the story was dead and I was trying to save it because in most of those cases, a lot of work had been put into it. I donāt publish everything, I throw away, I toss, I donāt even recycle usually, and so I try to be really careful about what exists and Iām conscious of an oeuvre or whatever. To an extent to where I just found that something just didnāt work in those things and thatās why Iāve been talking about them, and so the temptation then is for me to say like ātalking about then ruins it,ā that morality thing that people do. I donāt think thatās the case. The truth is I donāt need or have any desire to talk about something Iām working on that Iām excited about working on because I wouldnāt be talking about it, Iād be working on it.
JH: With COVID-19, there arenāt any writers groups, theyāre all online, through Zoom, like Misery Loves Company. Do you feel like this would be happening if we werenāt in a pandemic?
DM: I donāt think that it would be happening for me. That doesnāt mean that it wouldnāt be happening for other people. My own role, like the fact that Iām here to be involved, is 100% because of that. I donāt know if I would have ever published work if it wasnāt for the pandemic. I mean that last thing might be too strong. I wouldnāt have published work at this time or among this group. It would have been later in life. I stumbled onto Misery Loves Company after I got a story accepted, maybe my second acceptance, and I had just started. I thought you were supposed to read if you were published by them. That community aspect Iād never experienced really. I told you earlier I lived in punk houses. I wasnāt like in a music scene but I was really fucking young, I drank a lot, I didnāt play music but I sang, that just meant I performed. I didnāt really have an in there, I was escaping so much in my life at that point that this just sort of felt like where I happened to end up. And it was a transient community. And then at 21 I moved in with my wife, my girlfriend then, and our lives have been quiet ones. Weāre not really very social. So I wouldnāt have found the scene without it because if there hadnāt been a pandemic then there wouldnāt have been Misery Loves Company. I wouldnāt have started going to Friday nights and go and listen to this. I was already doing YouTube videos, Iād done a couple podcasts. I was ready to be involved in literature on that angle, but I didnāt think I was ready or didnāt know where to even be when it came to writing stuff. I didnāt want to like get an agent. So I donāt think I would have stumbled onto any of it probably. I submitted and I started working seriously. We were all locked down. I had like a crappy old noir that was just like I needed something to fill the time, rework this, revive it. I couldnāt do it. I started working on new work. For me personally it wouldnāt exist without that time where I had to completely sort of stop and I had to be very scared that I was missing a chance to do something that I loved because I didnāt know a traditional route to do it. I hesitate to say whether that is universal or not. I feel like I know less and less about this scene the more Iām even around it and I think partially thatās because I only really pay attention to the parts I like. So the other stuffās confusing.
William from Misery Tourism, Iāve never seen someone listen to a reading and immediately be able to give critical feedback to that thatās that good, that on, and I was addicted to that. I wanted to do it again and again. I was addicted to listening to it and from there so many different people have come in and out. My own role, it definitely would not be but for the pandemic.
JH: Some of your stories do definitely have a flavor of the South to them. Do you feel like youāre a Southern writer? Are Southern writers possible in this media environment weāre in, especially with Zoom and Misery Loves Company, with its stateless quality geographically?
DM: Yeah, I think though that when we close the computer and go outside and whatnot, weāre still interacting with the world where weāre at. I think it is possible. I donāt know what makes a Southern writer because it is a location and there are plenty of Southern writers that maybe their Southernness is somewhat disguised or not front and center but I just donāt know how to be any other than how I am. And I grew up here, and I grew up around people that were not just Southern because they were located here, but they were proudly Southern and they exhibited many of the things that Iāve come to learn are stereotypes. But I was a kid, I didnāt know they were stereotypes, that was just my uncle, you know? Certainly there is from my experience in my life, on Sundays, the whole family spent all Sundays together at my Nannieās house, all the aunts and uncles, all the cousins like were all together, and it was a wild chaotic energy and in the evening, after we had dinner, we always sat and played this card game and someoneāusually Uncle Craig, sometimes Carl, rarely Papawāwould tell a story, a long story. It wasnāt purposeful, it was about someone they knew. It wasnāt fiction. Somebody just kind of held court. And Iāve since heard like people talk about a Southern aspect to that, but again Iām just from here. Itās just so hard. I donāt know, maybe thatās not a Southern thing, maybe it is, I have no idea. As far as thinking of myself as a Southern writer, I think I do think of myself as one. I hope so. But itās the South so itās always really really complicated, because by the time I was 14 or 15 I was trying really hard to not sound Southern. Even now, I hope to not have a strong Southern accent because that was always associated with dumbness.
JH: Iām from upstate New York. Where Iām actually living right now is rural New York and I really relate strongly with what youāre saying about the storytelling because my father, theyāre dairy farmers, and thereās something about the rural character of where my family come from that is associated with storytelling. I wonder how much that had to do with ātuning your earā as a writer. If youāre in a family where that kind of thing goes on, it might kind of get your ear working in a way that wouldnāt otherwise.
DM: I think that rural aspect is more of a commonality, more important in that storytelling aspect than the Southern āwhatever,ā because thereās something about not much happening and all knowing the same people. When someone tells a story in that context, Iām learning more details as a kid about someone that I have one view of, because itāll be about somebody you know from church or a neighbor. Thereās something about the world kind of being small and you learning about it through them telling stories. Again youāre only yourself so itās so hard to know. I think thereās something about rural life that really gives way to that sort of activity.
JH: I put my foot in my mouth with you earlier when I was asking questions about Alt-Write and bibles and stuff like that. Like it was news to me that you were not on the show like last week, that you had left the podcast. I wouldnāt want to muckrake. One of the avenues into this whole world that is very strong for me is listening to that show because that has put me in touch with knowing about a whole host of writers. It started off being kind of an interview show then it became something more abstract.
DM: I was the same way. When it was the interview show that was like how I (I listen to a lot of podcasts anyway), I just kind of picked that one up. I got really interested, learned about all the great writers. I was very interested in bibles. Something about his sense of humor, I was very interested in it. And heād asked me to be on, and I thought it would be like interviews or something. And it wasnāt, we just talked, for six months. Iām careful about how I talk about the end part, because the magic of Alt-Write is, or wasāand Iām talking about the second iteration of the show when it became abstract and I was involvedāthe magic of that was that there was no pre-production meeting, no decision on creative direction. We were going with a flow, then as elements that just kept repeating themselves, they would become the plot lines and stuff. I had no falling out, Iām totally fine with bibles and Dāurban Moffer. There was just another person on the show that just didnāt like me, and thatās okay, but Iām extremely sensitive to that and so that was enough for me to just be like āfuck this, Iām out.ā So I always, when I talk about it, do not denigrate the show or bibles or Dāurban or whatever. But Iāve never heard an episode Iām on. I canāt listen to my own voice. Iāve never seen myself do Misery Loves Company when they do the YouTube videos, I canāt watch that. The reason my YouTube channel is the way it is is because I just press record and then when Iām done, press upload. I canāt rewatch it or edit it. I have a problem with that, like I have a problem with the sound of my own voice, or the look of my face or whatever. I have heard huge chunks of the season of Alt-Write Iām in. I would just fast forward as I heard my voice until I couldnāt hear my voice anymore. I know what the show became, I know how wonderful it is. Itās going to be weird because I actually think people are going to find that show, I think itās going to have a long life. And Iām never really going to be able to answer a lot about it because I donāt necessarily even know what or how was used of mine. But thatās what I want from it, in that way itās perfect because I just get to be a voice and itās this chorus of voices. Itās 100% led by bibles, whatever the conversation is, he gets control over that aspect. To have been involved with something like that with him is really really awesome. But mythology-wise I donāt know if I am supposed to break the fourth wall and be that sincere about it, because thereās still going to be a season three. I have no more idea of bibles as the person than I did from the start. I canāt tell when heās kidding, canāt tell when heās serious. I just donāt know. So I tend to sort of be maybe stand-offish about it.
JH: Iāve sort of picked up a little bit that maybe at times it was sort of tongue in cheek: āpreviously on Alt-Write.ā Like characters on a show. How much was deliberate, how much just comes off that way? Weāre sort of conditioned to binge watch Netflix shows with character arcsā¦
DM: I think it was like a lot of art: a happy accident that is then very fun to pretend was very well scripted. I really wanted to know about Expat Press, these people and these writers, I was really wide open and curious. Someone was reading my work, there was that ego stroke. I was just really interested in the conversation and so the dynamics really quickly became bibles was the one who had gone through it all before, and he knew all the people, and he had all the stories. He was kind of helping me, telling me what the scene was like, being a kind of guide or whatever. Then it extended to writing problems. And so I ended up having a real type of character that I played off him and played up that relationship imbalance in ways that were funny. I think that worked well for me and him to have a good rapport. Then I was always just really extremely conscious that we were recording. I mean Iāve been less conscious right now, because itās been more like question and answer. Thatās what I expected of Alt-Write. But bibles would just call and start talking about some random personal aspect. I thought we were friends. Maybe in a way that wasnāt quite accurate. So I started playing into that as a character. bibles was always just a little too cool. So I donāt think that stuff was on purpose, I personally believe it was a happy accident but Dāurban will tell you, I think, 100% the opposite because he really believes āno, we all knew where to be and what to do.ā To me it felt a little more natural than that.
JH: Tell me more about Characters, are you still working on it?
DM: Characters is done. Most of the pieces that were online before April 2021 or so were pieces of Characters. Since that time Iāve felt incredibly drained and kind of blocked. Thereās a couple different things Iāve tried to work on. The next big project, I donāt know. I have not been able to find space in my life to work on my work the way that I need to, that I was able to for all of 2020, part of 2021.
JH: Is Characters a novel, or a collection of short stories?
DM: Characters is a novel made up of a collection of short stories that tricks itself into being a novel. The fact of it being a novel is important.