Jennifer Haigh.
I read a book of her short stories and her latest novel Mercy Street. She is pretty amazing. I interviewed her for the Improv Notes journal.

Bob:
Have you any thoughts you could share about the improvisational nature of putting yourself into places you haven’t been?

Jennifer:
Absolutely, it’s the only way I’m able to do it. You have to suspend your internal editor in order to write anything. I think it’s the same whether you’re writing music, writing prose, writing poetry. You have to suspend the editor to free yourself up to make anything at all. Improvisation is really important for that. For instance, I always start my writing day when I’m not fully awake. I start early in the morning, like 5 or like 5:30 am. I haven’t had coffee yet, roll out of bed, and start writing as close to the dream state—and I write by hand. That’s very important because if I’m sitting at the keyboard it becomes something else, I become more efficient; I become more correct in some way. If I’m writing by hand, there’s something about the tactile nature of the act that makes me more able to make shit up and not be so self-critical. To get that first pass that’s hot off the brain! Where I’m not trying to do it right, and I’m not afraid of making mistakes—that’s essential for me. I can fix everything later, but you have to find some way to enable yourself to get it all wrong first.

Bob:
I was curious, you occupy the space of other people who you are not, and it’s very convincing. I especially love that. I was wondering how this works?

Jennifer:
I love that question. Before I wrote anything, I was interested in theatre and did some work as an actor. My first work of writing was as a playwright. In that world, improvisation is central to everything you do, and I was very much formed by that training. So, when you talk about inhabiting a character in a story, it’s very much the same process I learned as a young actress. Writing is kind of the same thing. In Mercy Street, the character of Victor Prine is an anti-abortion activist. He’s a racist. He’s a misogynist. He’s a retired truck driver from Appalachia. To write a character like that, with whom I disagree about a lot of important things, is an act of empathy more than anything else. As an actor you’re trained not to judge the character you’re playing, but to become the character you’re playing and to do what you must to take his side. You must make common cause with this imaginary person, even if he believes things you don’t agree with, even if he believes things you find horrifying. My job as the writer is not to pass judgment on this guy, but simply to present him as he is and how he sees himself and trust that the reader will draw their own conclusions about this character. Readers are bright, and that’s always the process in everything I’ve written, especially when I’m writing characters who are far from myself. I’m very aware of the need to be loyal to the character while I’m writing him and to be fair and represent him accurately. It’s not a glorified portrait, but it aims to be accurate.

Bob:
Do you also go off in directions that are uncomfortable, that you aren’t necessarily going to publish?

Jennifer:
Absolutely, you need to. And that’s where you find all the interesting stuff. You have to give yourself permission and understand that you are not obligated to show anyone what you write. Nobody has ever seen a first draft of anything from me. Do I show a second draft? Maybe. It’s more like a third draft that I’ll show to my first reader.

Bob:
That’s very interesting. To me sharing my work is a vulnerable spot, it can destroy everything I was trying to do. Particularly, hearing negative feedback is a tricky thing. You know what I’m talking about?

Jennifer:
I totally do. My own editor, the people I work with that have been publishing my books for years, I don’t even trust them. It’s funny because right now I’m a visiting professor at Boston University and I teach this workshop which is basically a critique session. There are several students who are working on novels and want to bring in chapters of the novel and I won’t let them.

Bob:
Why?

Jennifer:
For just this reason: if you show something out of context, which you are necessarily doing with the novel, you don’t have time to read the whole thing. It’s so easy to get bad advice or be discouraged by someone who doesn’t get it. And I don’t even trust myself as the instructor that I won’t mess students up by commenting on something out of context, where I don’t know what I’m talking about.