Puzzles, Trust, and Mystery: An Interview with Ellen Birkett Morris and Abby Lipscomb https://ift.tt/pMWPws3
We often think of genres as disparate categories, each with their own norms and limits, but craft can bridge these gaps offering a novel written with the precision of a short story and a short story collection that offers an expansive view of the world.
Such is the case with Beware the Tall Grass, a debut novel by Ellen Birkett Morris, and Spatfall, a debut short story collection by Abby Lipscomb. Beware the Tall Grass won the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence judged by Lan Samantha Chang and will be published by Columbus State University Press on March 15. Spatfall won the 2023 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction judged by David James Poissant and is now available from Willow Springs Books.
Morris and Lipscomb, both Southern writers and alumni of Queens University MFA program, got together to share their thoughts on story, process, and what makes a great read.
Ellen Birkett Morris: The stories in Spatfall are so artful, walking the tightrope between sad and funny. What drew you to writing?
Abby Lipscomb: Reading was my escape and my pleasure growing up. I’d wait by the mailbox for the latest edition of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and I’d devour it in a week, wondering what they’d left out. I majored in psychology and worked as a marriage and family therapist after grad school. During a protracted family crisis, I rediscovered my love of writing through journaling. The journaling morphed into fiction, and I began to search out how to write. I read story collections (Alice Munro, Pinckney Benedict), I attended Tinker Mountain Writer’s Workshop every summer, and I earned an MFA at Queens University.
Beware the Tall Grass demonstrates an adventurousness of craft in the way it conjures two fantastic worlds. I would guess you began creating worlds as a child. What drew you to writing?
Ellen Birkett Morris: My father grew up on the streets of Detroit without much formal education, but read everything – psychology, philosophy, fiction, and nonfiction. I grew up in an apartment surrounded by stacks of books. He wrote detective fiction, so I had a model for what the writing life looked like. He also bought me books and read us bedtime stories including Flannery O’Connor stories that left an imprint on my brain. I never imagined doing anything else but writing.
When I started publishing short stories, I knew I needed more input on my work and to be part of a community of writers. That drew me to Queens. I learned things and built connections that have helped me grow as a writer.
Abby Lipscomb: How wonderful to have a father who loved the written word! You’ve written and published two poetry chapbooks, the short story collection, Lost Girls, and now a novel. What drew you to the novel form?
EBM: I’m by nature a short story writer and came to the novel slowly and with a lot of trepidation. I wrote Beware the Tall Grass as a novel because I needed a large canvas on which to explore big ideas of past lives, memory, loss, and love. I joke that writing the novel felt like chipping away at a mountain with nail scissors. I’ve drafted another novel since and thankfully the process was much easier.
Short form work comes more naturally since I am also a poet and because I really value concise language. I enjoy figuring out when to start and end a story and using just the right details to build meaning and resonance in a small space. One of the stories in my collection Lost Girls was just a few pages long. What about you, which do you prefer, long or short form, and why?
AL: I prefer to write fiction in short story form because I love puzzles. Like you, I enjoy the challenge of fitting whole worlds into small spaces, of adjusting POV, characterization, plot, setting, and structure to create an experience someone might find memorable.
As Lauren Groff says in her introduction to Best American Short Stories 2023, “The story form is infinitely malleable, gorgeously economical, and endlessly surprising; it is long enough to lose oneself in, short enough to deliver a satisfying gut punch.”
EBM: I love that description. I was intrigued by the range of experiences depicted in your stories and the way you managed to create a unity of tone across the stories. How do you choose your subject matter?
AL: I begin with an image: a river of horses (“Carousel”), a child on a window seat painting dead bugs (“Spatfall); or a mystifying situation, such as marriage in the aftermath of infidelity (“Fetch”), or the fickleness of memory (“The Snake Story.”). If it has mystery for me, I’ll pursue it, hoping it will lead to that “extra dimension” Flannery O’Connor talked about, “that comes about when the writer puts us in the middle of some human action as it is illuminated and outlined by mystery.”
What about you? I’d love to know what inspired the past lives storyline in Beware the Tall Grass.
EBM: I come across an idea, a line, or an image that really hooks me and then I follow it. I trust that if the idea has energy for me I will be able to write about it in a way that has energy and appeal for readers. I look for the mystery you talked about. And, like you said, exploring the question raised by a scenario is a great way to propel plot.
Beware the Tall Grass was sparked by a 2014 National Public Radio story about children with past life memories. The idea of that was too compelling to pass up. I ended up with a dual narrative novel of a mother grappling with her son’s disturbing memories of serving in Vietnam alternating with the experiences of a young soldier. The storylines meet at the end.
AL: In Beware the Tall Grass, I admire how you use the tension produced by the question of how the dual narratives are connected, to propel plot. I’ve heard it said that we, as writers, tend to write about the same thing over and over. What is “that thing” for you?
EBM: I think my ground as a writer is self-determination, the power behind the choices we make, even when the choices seem impossible. The women and girls in Lost Girls made choices and both Eve, the mother, and Thomas, the soldier, are driven to make choices to protect the people they love. Choices drive action, so this is good for building compelling fiction. Your stories are so well-drawn and meaningful. What is the ground you cover in stories?
AL: Loneliness. The search for belonging and the ambivalence that usually accompanies longing to fit in. I’m particularly interested in what happens when a person’s (character’s) modus operandi for belonging is turned upside down. Will they quit trying to connect, or will they choose a whole new game plan?
EBM: Interesting. What is your writing process? Do you usually begin a piece, knowing how the story will end, or do you write on, waiting to see what develops?
AL: I rarely know from the start how a story will end. One of my requirements for a good story is the pleasure of not knowing, not being able to predict what will happen next. I figure if I, the writer, don’t know how my story will end, there’s a chance the reader won’t know either. Also, not knowing where the story is going keeps me interested during the long process of writing and revising.
I begin a story with a mystery of some sort, then search for truth in it. As I mentioned earlier, the initial mystery can be an image, a situation, or a setting (the mill pond in “Spatfall”). I set out to describe that image, situation, or setting as organically as I can, waiting to see what comes up, while keeping in mind that whatever the inspiration, it’s been written about before, so how can I make it new and unpredictable. I write by hand on legal pads until I think I have enough for a rough draft, which I read and reread until I have an idea for an ending. I enjoy revision most, the chiseling of the ungainly draft into a story that has something new to say, or a new way to say something old.
Two tricks I’ve discovered: Once I have an image, character, or situation I think may drive a story, I go on a tour of stories written by other writers in search of a POV, structure, voice, and tone that will fit. Secondly, after revision, I read what I have on my iPad because this is how I read other people’s work, and poor word choices and typos seem to jump out. Putting the piece away for months or years helps too.
What is your process? Do you have any idea how a piece will end before you begin, or do you wait to see what your characters will do?
EBM: I work on a computer, and I write my way into a story without knowing the end. I want it to come naturally and be as Flannery O’Connor said, “surprising and inevitable.” I rely heavily on my subconscious associations to lead me to the scene.
Beware the Tall Grass is a dual point of view narrative between Eve, a modern mother of a young son with past life memories, and Thomas, a young man in the 1960s who enlists and serves in Vietnam. I wrote the book straight through alternating points of view in the hopes that each section would echo the one before in a way that would create a thematic connection. That said, I do try to make myself a roadmap of the steps my characters will take along the way and then fill in the details, reactions, dialogue, and action. By the end, I knew the characters so well that it was no question how they would act when they were faced with challenges.
EBM: Your stories are so detailed and evocative. I feel like I am inhabiting the world of the characters. In your opinion, what components make a great story?
AL: When I read a story of any form, I want to know what is at stake for the characters early on, and I want to know that I’m going to enjoy the ride. For me, enjoying the ride means having confidence in the writer’s ability to “steer the craft” in a way that is easy to follow as well as skillfully unique. I want to feel, at some point, that thrill that comes when a story reaches the “anything can happen” plane. I want to be surprised either by what does happen, or by how the writer delivers what happens. I’m thinking of a story I read recently where I thought we were heading toward some version of yet another student-professor illicit relationship when, five pages in, the story took an abrupt but satisfying leap into portal fantasy.
I enjoyed wondering about the connection between your two main characters in Beware. MY curiosity was definitely piqued. The process of keeping that momentum before the reveal must have been challenging.
What are your requirements for great story?
EBM: Stories work best for me when they are packed with the kind of unique details that give characters and places authenticity. In a workshop, the writer Ron Carlson said if you have a Denny’s in the story and another one down the road make sure each is unique. Curiously, the more specific and quirkier the details are in a story the more relatable and universal they become to the reader.
Once those items, objects, or details are placed and as they are revisited in the story, they gain metaphoric weight and meaning. In Beware the Tall Grass, the tall grass is not just a place where bad things happen, it begins to symbolize those times in all our lives where circumstances are beyond our control.
Drama is also important. In another workshop, the late Lee K. Abbott posed the question, “Have you exploited the dramatic potential of each scene?” So, I ask myself if I have gotten my characters in enough trouble or if I am holding back.
AL:Beware the Tall Grass is a wonderful example of not holding back. Thank you for working with me; this was fun.
EBM: Thanks, Abby. I really enjoyed talking story with you and wish you great success with Spatfall.
FICTION Beware the Tall Grass
By Ellen Birkett Morris
Columbus State University Press
March 15, 2024
FICTION Spatfall
By Abby Lipscomb
Willow Springs Books
February 12, 2024
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