The Slant Interview With Elizabeth J. Colen ? Flash Fiction Chronicles

Michelle Reale: Do you think of yourself primarily as a poet or fiction writer?

Elizabeth J. Colen: I came to writing first with short stories, am most closely bound to the (so far unpublished) novel I?ve written, but seem to fare better publishing-wise with poetry. I like to think of myself as a paratactic writer before anything else, and parataxis usually seems more welcome in poetry. Genre distinctions have never been particularly important to me though.

MR: Which do you feel more comfortable with?

EJC: I?ve never really been comfortable with either, never at a place where I feel I can say ?yes, this is how it?s done.? Though I do usually know when something is done, I?m often not at all sure how it got there.

For the past four or five years, I feel I can say I speak pretty comfortably about what?s going on in contemporary poetry, who?s doing what, the presses and their various aesthetics, the journals and theirs. I like poetry maybe because I am more willing to say, ?What just happened?? after reading something that really strikes me, guts me, gets me on a visceral level (the best place for art), and admitting to myself that: ?I really don?t know what just happened.? And then being okay with that. Which is not to say I like nonsense.

The better question for me is whether I am more comfortable with narrative or the sonic qualities of a piece of writing. And there I will go with sound every time.

MR: How do you feel about flash fiction?s current popularity? I ask because some people hate the term?flash?as though it were a lesser form of other kinds of fiction writing.

EJC: Again, I don?t really find genre tags useful, except for marketing or filing purposes. (About this I am in an ongoing argument with about a half-dozen writer friends.) So I suppose ?flash!? is as good as any term. (I also like it because I think of the flash bang grenade, which is a great way to think of effective short forms.) I think flash, when it is good, is about as good as it gets: you get a story, complete, something you feel or something that changes you, even for a minute, in such a small space. Perhaps it is idealistic to say ?changes you,? but all good art to me is transformative?whether I?m stopped in my tracks and for a few seconds can do nothing but stare out at the world, or whether I see language used in an exciting way I?ve not seen before, or whether there?s a particular image I?m left with that absolutely cracks open the world for me. When a ?flash? piece is just a bit of something, that can be interesting too, but it?s not what moves me. I like whole moments where, while I might be able to imagine the greater world outside the story, I can?t imagine another sentence or image taking up space on that particular page.

I guess what I?m saying is that there is a difference between our cultural tendency to concision, by image on tumblr or 140 characters at a time, and what?s vital about flash fiction. This past winter in a hybrid lit/creative writing class I taught, we got into many discussions about ?why flash,? ?why now? and a lot of students were convinced it had to do with Twitter and Facebook and our shrinking attention spans. I think if everyone started crafting their tweets and status updates as carefully as Lydia Davis or Michael Martone, for example write anything, then I would spend a lot more time reading them.

MR: Take us through the process of writing a piece.

EJC: Well, for me the process of reading and the process of writing feel almost identical. When I?m writing and it?s going well, I?m really just pulling the next ?right? sound out of my ear. I don?t know anything about meter really, I learned recently that I have some trouble picking out the stress in a word, which is why scanning a poem is hard for me, but I know when something sounds right or sounds wrong, and that has everything to do with meter. I think. I?m speaking about poetry and prose. Because to me the process of writing them is no different.

So the process? I read whatever book of poetry (or really sound-dense prose) I have on hand out loud until my own words start piling up inside my ears and start wanting to come out. Sometimes this can happen in a few lines, and I put the book down and pick up the pen (or computer). Other times I can read a whole book and nothing really gets going for me. And that is a day that nothing gets done. Except reading, which is also good. Sometimes that says something about the book, that it?s sonic qualities don?t speak to me, but usually it just says something about me, that that?s not where I am in that moment. And I go with that. I am not a writer who forges on, or sits at her desk every day plodding.

But if it does work, I will work each sentence or line out to the best of my ability to some end point (the end of the poem, for example). And then I read what I?ve written out loud, adjusting, reading out loud, adjusting, reading out loud, until it sounds right. Often what this means is some substantial part of the narrative has dropped away, or become coded (or coated) in other words.

Then later I will go back and read over it and adjust (by adjust I mean ?revise,? but really I?m just making it into what it was supposed to be in the first place and I just mis-stepped), over and over until it feels right.

With prose, sometimes in order to get the story out faster I leave whole areas undone that I have to go back to, summarizing in that space in capital letters what I want to talk about but don?t yet have the sounds for. Then when I have time I will rework the material for sound. Always for sound.

MR: How many revisions will one of your pieces go through?

EJC: Probably 20-40 revisions. Sometimes more. That said, the first 20 revisions take place during or shortly after the initial generation stage. Revision isn?t revision; it?s writing.

MR: Who is writing some of the best flash fiction you?ve read so far?

EJC: I really like Lydia Davis, but I feel like that?s the obvious answer. The other obvious answer is my fellow Rose Metal Press authors. But I really, really value Rose Metal Press?s aesthetic; I think they?re really publishing solid, innovative work. Especially Mary Miller, I love her work so much. Tim Jones-Yelvington and Sean Lovelace are both doing really exciting things with storytelling. And John Jodzio has one of my favorite stories ever of any length with ?Inventory.? I also really like Kim Chinquee, Amelia Gray, and Matt Bell? I know I?m forgetting some of my favorites, but I?m writing this on the fly without access to either Internet or my bookshelves.

EJC: Name some of your other favorite authors.

If I can talk about poets also: Richard Siken, Shane McCrae, Rachel Loden, Liz Waldner. I also love Kenzaburo Oe, Haruki Murakami, Nicholas Mosley, Sven Age Madsen, Gertrude Stein, of course, and I just read Ron Silliman?s Tjanting. That book just about blew my mind, though I don?t know if I can call that a favorite. I don?t know what to call it really.

MR: Your flash collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (DMMDDM) has an interesting theme. Tell us about the process of writing those pieces and how they came to be published with other flash collections.

Those stories are actually bits I culled from the novel I finished about seven years ago. The novel ended up being about 700 pages (kind of an epic affair!) and even at that length got a few near misses at some really great presses before I decided it needed more detailed attention. I?ve been paring it down since then, making use of the pieces cut, and revising revising revising. When I finally finish playing with it it will probably be like one big poem. I?m getting so obsessive about each line. Right now it?s about 400 pages?a much more manageable ms. Most of it is told in short vignettes. So I took some pieces and made them into tiny stories that would stand on their own, but also point subtly to the larger themes of matrilineage and all its (at least in my experience) difficulties. Parts of that novel are in Money for Sunsets and also in Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies, which comes out this fall.

I basically built DMMDDM out of these bits specifically to send to Rose Metal Press because I like so much what they do. I only sent it to two or three other places. So I feel pretty lucky and honored to be there.

MR: In your opinion, what makes a great flash piece?

EJC: Interesting, yet subtle language use. Good turns of phrase are important. But what is most important to me is that it is actually a whole and complete piece on its own. Otherwise I feel like I?m missing something no matter how good it is. Other than that I?m pretty open to being surprised.

MR: Would you say that flash fiction and prose poems are closely related? Say, like, oh I don?t know, first cousins if not brother and sister?

EJC: Probably more like two sides of one coin. Or two personalities coexisting in the same body. One leans more towards story though, and one toward sound. Both should of course be well-managed to both those ends, but to me that?s the dividing line?whether the focus is on sound or narrative.

MR: What are you working on now?

EJC:I recently completed a third poetry manuscript, What Weaponry, that I?ve just started sending around. It?s one complete story written in 66 prose poems. Something I?ve never done, so at the moment I?m a little bit in love with it. I really have to stop tinkering with it at this point and move on. I?ve started a new book of lineated poems also. I just started it and, of course, it has a very specific focus. I can?t seem to write a poem or a story or anything unless I know what ?book? it?s going to go in. This one is very research-based. But I haven?t gotten far enough along with it to want to talk about the specifics.

Mostly though I?m focusing on my studies. I did things a little backwards and recently went back to school. I?m halfway through the MFA program at the University of Washington and am learning so much and getting excited about all kinds of things. I have a good handle on what?s going on in the world now, so I?m focusing on filling in the background, and finding out where all the now crawled out of.

MR: Elizabeth, take my flash challenge! In no less than 25 and now more than 150 create a flash piece using the following words:

yarn, zaftig, sweepstakes, blood, orchard, hell-bound, fornicate , morphine , beautiful people, and plumage.

EJC: There in the orchard, you, of the beautiful people, your sweepstakes of DNA, hell-bound to fornicate. Red of sunk sun morphine to the dying leaves? muddy color, four shoes in shade, grass bent back, bare root muscled, the blood on plumage, animal sounds. Spent tree squat and zaftig, bark newly flayed, and you, like a calligram opening on the page, or yarn seeking its hook ride to the next loop.

MR: Thanks Elizabeth. You did my flash challenge justice?and you are really one of my favorite writers.? Does that sound sappy?? Well it?s true.? So be it!

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Elizabeth J. Colen is the author?of Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010), Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011), and Waiting Up for the End of the World (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), also does visual work in collage and photography, collects stray bits of conversation, makes lists. She blogs here.

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