A couple of years ago, I was
fortunate to occasionally edit essays and short stories for Brain, Child magazine—a most enjoyable
freelance editing gig. That's how I met Lisa Lenzo, whose short story
collection, Strange Love (Wayne State University
Press) was published in 2014. I so enjoyed working with her on
"Aliens," a story that first appeared in Brain, Child, that I knew I'd want to follow-up one day with an
author interview. When I read the book, I was captivated not only by Lisa's
prose, storycraft, and characters, but by the setting along Lake Michigan, and
the role the lake and weather plays in her book.
Strange
Love is a current finalist for Foreward Review's IndieFab Book of the Year,
and was also chosen as a Michigan Notable Book for 2015. Bonnie Jo Campbell, in her endorsement on the back cover writes, "These stories will surprise you with their intensity and intimacy, and Lenzo's language will mesmerize you."
Lisa L. was kind enough to answer my
nosy questions.
Please welcome Lisa Lenzo
Q. The stories move in a chronological
way, with the same central characters – Annie and her daughter Marly – over
10-plus years, but also leave out chunks of time. Did you write them in that
order? Did you write additional stories to make the collection fuller? Were
there other Annie/Marley stories that you left out?
LL. I wrote the first story, “Still
Life,” many years ago—it was finished in time to include in my first book, Within the Lighted City, but it
wasn’t a good fit for that collection. I didn’t write my next relationship
story until a decade later, when, after coming home from another date with an
odd and interesting yet frustrating man, I thought: This is ridiculous! This is hilarious! I need to write this down.
And I proceeded to write down scene after scene from that relationship, which I
then transformed into a story. At some point I had three long stories about my
relationships with various men, and I realized I could write several more and
have a collection.
I ended up with five or six long stories,
which I showed to my writing group. They really liked Marly, Annie’s daughter,
who appeared in many of her mother’s stories, and they wanted to see more of
her. They also thought the stories about the mom’s boyfriends should be cut way
back. So I cut the five stories I had about Annie by about half and wrote four
Marly stories, which I then interspersed between the Annie stories. That makes
it sound easier than it was.
The most difficult thing was to
write each story so that it stood alone, yet didn’t repeat what was included in
the earlier stories. For instance, when I mentioned Marly’s flame-red hair or
her abusive boyfriend in one story, I couldn’t mention them again in a
subsequent story as if introducing them for the first time.
Q. I understand you tried to make
the collection into a novel but it didn't feel right. Can you talk about that
attempt, the process of understanding whether you are writing a novel or a
collection, and what drove your final decision?
LL. I knew I was writing a
collection early on, and by the time I was done, that it was a
novel-in-stories. But my agent said that the term “novel-in-stories” was not
being used anymore, that the term in favor was “linked collection,” and
collections “don’t sell.” It was my agent’s idea to turn it into a novel so
that she could sell it—she thought I would be able to transform it into a
novel, because it was almost one already.
So I tried to do what she asked by
filling in the chronological gaps and also filling out Annie’s and Marly’s
lives, so that the focus wasn’t so much on boys and men. But I ended up with my
string of neat, self-contained stories—each its own little cabin--looking as if
I’d tacked them together with scrap lumber. And I found the overall story was
stronger when there were time gaps
and the focus was mainly on men. Of
course you can’t help but get some sense of the rest of Annie’s and Marly’s
lives, too, especially the mother-daughter relationship, which is the strongest
and maybe the most interesting relationship in the book. Ironically, I think Strange Love as it is could have
“passed” for a novel—readers and reviewers keep telling me it reads like one.
Q. Lake Michigan (often ice covered) is central in the
stories, and you've said that as a Michigan native the lake is in your
"bones". Do you think of the lake as a character in the book?
LL. I grew up in Detroit, which is
also in my bones, but when I first came to live on the lake at the age of 18, I
fell under its spell, and it has held me ever since. “Character” seems too
small a thing to describe The Lake, which, from the vantage point of anyone on
the beach, looks as big and wide as an ocean. It’s actually an inland sea, and
for Annie, it’s as large as God—or actually, maybe larger, since she’s not sure
God exists. And the Lake is Godlike—vast, mysterious, powerful, both soothing
and harsh. It’s larger than life, larger than any character I can conceive of,
whether man, woman, or child. It is an overreaching and underlying presence in
Annie’s life and mine.
Q. Annie and Marly are variously in
relationships with men and always with each other; so there's some romantic
love, and some is familial--representative of the pursuit
of love itself, which often does feel
strange or work out strangely. I wonder what you had in mind by the title?
LL. Yes, it’s the pursuit of love
that feels strange and works out strangely. And all love is somewhat strange,
when you consider it closely enough--both weird and wondrous. At the same time,
I think most people will agree that Annie and Marly’s men, with maybe one exception,
are odd or strange or eccentric to varying degrees, and that Annie and Marly
are somewhat unusual, too. As Marly says at one point, “You’re not exactly
casebook normal, Mom, and I’m on medication.”
Q. We first came into contact when I
was a freelance editor for Brain, Child,
working with you on minor revisions for the story, "Aliens," in which
a teenage Marly tries to distance herself from her mother. I was so happy to
see Annie and Marly again in the pages of your book, as if they were old
friends. I wonder, is that a small glimpse of what it's like for a fiction
writer when you go back and revive characters?
LL. I tend to come back to the same
characters, based on my family and myself. Then I need a break from them, so I
write something totally different. Then I come back to my family again and,
yes, it is nice to be in familiar territory, where I know the people so well
that the main challenge is not in creating characters but in conveying them to
the reader as richly as I can.
Q. Some writers find it easier to
write about a geographic place when they are away from it, while others like to
be in the environment they are writing about. Where do you fit in? Do you write
best about Michigan and the lake region while there? Did you get away at any
time while writing, and did that help or hinder your ability to conjure the
place on the page?
LL. I think I work better when I’m
in the place I’m writing about. Then,for instance, if I want to describe the
ice on the lake, I can just walk down to the lake in winter and check it out.
I’ve recently finished Taking the Blue
Star, a novel set in and around Saugatuck, Michigan, and after one of the
earlier drafts was done, I had a friend drive me to all the places where the
characters traveled, at the same time of year (November) that the novel takes
place, so I could look around me as my friend drove and flesh out the details
related to setting.
Looking out at the fields of corn,
still standing but dead, the stalks pale and dry, I thought ghost corn, unsure of whether I’d made
up that phrase or heard it somewhere, and I gave that thought and phrase to one
of my characters. One of the scenes happens at a nearby monastery, and another
at the local gun and pizza shop, places I don’t normally frequent, and I
wandered through both several times, getting a feel for them and seeing what
was on display and for sale, casing both joints for whatever details I needed
to use for my novel.
Q. Your introduction mentions you couldn't
have completed the collection "without my writing pals". Can you talk
about your writing community? Is it a matter of getting actual
feedback on drafts? Or is it (instead or also) more about support and
encouragement, having someone around who knows what an editorial rejection feels like?
LL. I rely on both things—feedback
is essential and emotional support is, too—but since I am dedicated to writing
and am not going to be deterred by rejection, it’s the feedback that I need the
most. I sometimes worry that I’m missing out on greater connection to writers
and writing communities, because unlike most writers, I have a nonacademic job,
and I work too late in the evenings to attend most readings. I’m looking for an
agent to sell my finished novel, and I wonder if it would be easier if I were
in an academic setting and had access to more writers. But I’m grateful for all
the writers I do know. And I truly rely on my closest writing friends to help
me make my rough manuscripts into finished ones.
Q. In the online MFA program I teach
in, we talk about designing a writing life, given that most students will
always have a full- or part-time "day job" that isn't writing (and
not every writer will want to teach). I believe that, like your character
Annie, you work for a bus company. Can you describe how you organize time
around your job, and how you sustain a writing life? In terms of productivity
and craft, what does a writer, in it for the long haul, need to do to continue
to write and not be frustrated by lack of time?
LL. I’m lucky in that, rather than
working 9 to 5, I work in the afternoons, so I have the whole morning to
write—more time than a lot of my teacher friends who are writers. The drawback
is I usually work at my job six days a week and also into the evening, I don’t
have summers off, and I’ve never had a sabbatical. Like any serious writer, I
still have to draw lines around my writing time and create a balance between
time for writing, family, friends, errands, etc. I worry that sometimes my
friends and family are disappointed in some of my choices. But they mainly
understand, I think, and it helps tremendously that I have a super supportive husband.
Q. What are you working on now? In
addition to fiction, do you write in any other genre or form?
LL. Right now I’m doing research and
taking notes for a book whose working title is None of Us Are Free. It’s an autobiographical and historical novel
that takes place in Detroit, focusing on 1972 and 1973, when I was 15 and
active in a city-wide radical movement whose main concerns were the criminal
(in)justice system, the heroin epidemic, and a lethal and racist police unit
known as STRESS. In addition to fiction, I also write creative nonfiction. My
work often falls between the two, and I’m constantly struggling with trying to
decide and define which of the two I’m creating. Some pieces are definitely one
or the other, but many occupy a middle ground.
Swag
! Lisa Lenzo would like to send one blog reader a complimentary signed copy of
her book. Just leave a comment here by Sunday, April 5. (Must have a U.S.
postal address.)
Images of Lake Michigan ice, courtesy of Charlie Schreiner; others courtesy Lisa Lenzo
> On their web "channel," the Los Angeles Review of Books is publishing a new literary journal, The Offing. And they're paying (a little), and the first wave of submissions was so strong, they're already closed to more (but re-opening on March 30). (via Harriet Blog/Poetry Foundation)
