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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob:
Have you any thoughts you could share about the improvisational nature of putting yourself into places you haven\u2019t been?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jennifer:
Absolutely, it\u2019s the only way I\u2019m able to do it. You have to suspend your internal editor in order to write anything. I think it\u2019s the same whether you\u2019re 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\u2019m not fully awake. I start early in the morning, like 5 or like 5:30 am. I haven\u2019t had coffee yet, roll out of bed, and start writing as close to the dream state\u2014and I write by hand. That\u2019s very important because if I\u2019m sitting at the keyboard it becomes something else, I become more efficient; I become more correct in some way. If I\u2019m writing by hand, there\u2019s 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\u2019s hot off the brain! Where I\u2019m not trying to do it right, and I\u2019m not afraid of making mistakes\u2014that\u2019s essential for me. I can fix everything later, but you have to find some way to enable yourself to get it all wrong first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob:
I was curious, you occupy the space of other people who you are not, and it\u2019s very convincing. I especially love that. I was wondering how this works?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s a racist. He\u2019s a misogynist. He\u2019s 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\u2019re trained not to judge the character you\u2019re playing, but to become the character you\u2019re 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\u2019t 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\u2019s always the process in everything I\u2019ve written, especially when I\u2019m writing characters who are far from myself. I\u2019m very aware of the need to be loyal to the character while I\u2019m writing him and to be fair and represent him accurately. It\u2019s not a glorified portrait, but it aims to be accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob:
Do you also go off in directions that are uncomfortable, that you aren\u2019t necessarily going to publish?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jennifer:
Absolutely, you need to. And that\u2019s 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\u2019s more like a third draft that I\u2019ll show to my first reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob:
That\u2019s 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\u2019m talking about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jennifer:
I totally do. My own editor, the people I work with that have been publishing my books for years, I don\u2019t even trust them. It\u2019s funny because right now I\u2019m 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\u2019t let them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob:
Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jennifer:
For just this reason: if you show something out of context, which you are necessarily doing with the novel, you don\u2019t have time to read the whole thing. It\u2019s so easy to get bad advice or be discouraged by someone who doesn\u2019t get it. And I don\u2019t even trust myself as the instructor that I won\u2019t mess students up by commenting on something out of context, where I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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