Responses from Glen Jeffries

Are there any books on craft or writing exercises you recommend?

Stephen King’s On Writing is a fearless and honest detailing of what it takes to be a writer – there’s a simple anecdote in there about where he places his desk in his office that I find incredibly comforting to return to when I’m struggling with my writing (I won’t say any more about that vignette in the hope that you’ll go read the book). John McPhee’s Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process also brilliant – his structural diagrams revealing the grand architecture of how he plans his writing are so lifting to me because they reveal exactly why the aircraft flies. I’ve recently read A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders. The book has alternating chapters—a classic Russian short story printed in full followed by an analysis of what makes it great—and it’s such a non-scholarly but powerful insight into the craft of short story writing. (It’s also a teaser of the MFA course he teaches at Syracuse and Saunders now has a Substack called Story Club that further continues his approachable and masterful imparting of wisdom about storycraft.)

On voice:

For this particular piece—where the narrator is a cuckoo—the idea came to me while I sat watching a garden bird in a park. It struck me that my watching this little bird—it was a robin, if I recall—was so egocentric, so stuck on me as the center of the universe. I watched it fly around, bathe in a water trough, eat scraps from the floor and I felt protective of its vulnerability as a tiny ball of fluff. And then I realized that this all felt quite condescending; that robin certainly didn’t look at me in the same way. As long as I wasn’t a threat I was invisible. This made me think I could write a story from the perspective of a bird that had the same kind of humanized thinking that I do—basically a role reversal. A bird with sympathy and an interest in the non-autotelic activity. With that, I then imagined how I would look on these two people in the story eagerly searching for me if I could just fly away forever or reveal myself to them any time I wanted. I wanted to avoid the twee (“this bird is so kind”) and the ridiculous (“this bird is an avian Einstein”) and I checked each sentence for breaking those parameters. I think I got it just about right.

Do you have favorite genres/authors/magazines/books?
I love anything by John Irving – it’s his unique characters and slightly impertinent narrative voice (and also his appreciation of wrestling).  Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, too – that project, that style of frantic writing and frankness, feels liberating to me.  I’m also a huge Anne Tyler fan – I return to The Accidental Tourist at least once a year – because she makes the mundane substantially worthy and interesting and isn’t that what we’re all trying to do in our lives?!

Who do you collaborate with on your writing?
I have a couple of trusted readers I’ll give drafts to – one of my best friends in particular endures reading many of my drafts.  He’s a big reader but not necessarily a big fiction reader or ensconced in a literary world and this, in a way, makes his responses more valid.  And honest.  And that matters.

What are some motivations for your storytelling? 
I like building characters, places and narratives that are melded from things I spot in my own life.  I take what I see and use that to add to something else I see to eventually get something new—fictional—that has resonances of reality.  Sometimes it means my storytelling fails because there’s too much of too little to create coherence – like that episode in The Simpsons where Homer is tasked with building a car and he takes all the best bits from other models he knows and what results is a disaster.  But getting that right is what motivates me.  That way I build a new world with many nods to many of the things—big and small, happy and sad, global and local—that are right here in the world I live in.

Does your "day job" inform your craft?
I’d like to answer this positively but it’s actually the opposite.  If I get too blinkered and focussed on my day job I write less.  The negative correlation is stark.  This isn’t a complaint or an excuse—it’s an inevitability and something I need to get better at.  My second day job should be to better manage my day job to enable more time for my night job.

Do you have an initial process?

It’s a mixture.  I sometimes take notes on my phone and sometimes jot things down in a little red book I have, if I remember to bring it along with me.  To be honest I need a better system as I’ll often promise I’ll write an idea down later and never do. But maybe that just means it wasn’t a good idea in the first place…

Favorite independent bookstore?

In the U.S., it’s Tempest Book Shop in Waitsfield, Vermont.  In the UK (where I live right now) London Review Bookshop.