Interview with Alexander Maksik
conducted by Ali Hanna & Gabrielle Garruto
A 2017 GUGGENHEIM FELLOW, ALEXANDER MAKSIK IS THE AUTHOR OF THE NOVELS, YOU DESERVE NOTHING, A MARKER TO MEASURE DRIFT & SHELTER IN PLACE.
Garruto & Hanna: The main character in your most recent novel, Shelter in Place, suffers from the symptoms of bipolar disorder, and it seems that
all of your novels tend to include characters that embody different hot button issues (from mental health, to immigration, and even sexuality could fall into that realm as well). What moves you to take on these subjects? How do you go about illustrating experiences that you yourself might not be intimately familiar with?
Maksik: I don’t know how a writer can be alive today and not, in one way or another, work in response to a world beyond her own immediate experience. That response, as far as I’m concerned, is my primary responsibility. I travel a lot. I know a wide variety of people. I read. I have worked many jobs, lived in many different places. My hope is that I can synthesize experience and through some combination of empathy, imagination, anger, desire and love, turn it into novels and short stories and screenplays.
G & H: It took a while for your first novel, You Deserve Nothing, to picked up by Europa Editions. What is your advice to aspiring writers that are seeking publication of their work? And specifically, in regards to editing, how do you combat compromising your artistic integrity?
Maksik: Be patient. Every mistake I’ve ever made as a writer is to do, in one way or another, with impatience. When I first started out, I wanted so desperately to publish. I wanted to make my mark. I wanted evidence of talent, to say, look, there’s my name, I made that. And, of course, publishing is important. Writers want readers. But simply because an editor wants to publish your work doesn’t mean the work is any good. That is regularly proven true. Most important, and this is not some bullshit cliché, is that what you’re sending out there is the finest work you’re capable of writing. Whatever immediate pleasure you may feel in selling a story will never make up for the disappointment and shame you’ll feel in publishing work you’re not proud of. There are times, of course, when you just can’t afford to turn down money. But when you can afford to favor art over commerce, do. So, be patient. Publish less, write better. There’s no hurry.
G & H: Writer’s block is no stranger to any author, regardless of experience, and sometimes letting go of a past project and moving on, or simply finding a story at all, can be an emotional and stressful process. Where do you find inspiration? And when the story just isn’t coming together, or the thought seems to be impossible to translate into written word, what’s your strategy?
Maksik: This goes to your first question. Travel, read, know people from different cultures, who speak different languages, who have more money,
less money, different politics, who practice different religions, are of different races and genders and sexual orientations. If you live this way, there is no end to inspiration.
“I HAVE NEVER RUN OUT OF STORIES, BUT I’VE CERTAINLY FAILED TO WRITE MANY OF THEM.”
I find that unless I care deeply about my characters, their stories, there’s no use writing. I don’t always know. Sometimes it takes a few hundred pages to discover that these people I thought I loved, bored the hell out of me. So, to the extent that I can prescribe a strategy, it’s this: care deeply or find another story.
G & H: You’ve written before about wanting to write about sensual experiences, that connection in writing comes from feeling instead
of thought. Could you expand on that? Why is it important to focus on feelings and bodily experience?
Maksik: Clearly, it’s not important for all writers. But I write this way because it’s how I experience the world. I’ve always been more excited by the sensual than the intellectual. I’ve always been happiest when lost in physical experience. Swimming in the ocean is far more gratifying to me than sitting at a dinner party discussing, well, about anything. So, when I write fiction, I’m looking through this same lens. I’m most moved by art that inspires in me an immediate, nearly physical response. I think art like this is the most difficult to make and the most difficult to explain. All the novels, all the paintings I love most, are those that somehow affect me bodily.
G & H: When a new idea for a novel or short story comes to mind, what is your process of shaping that idea into written work?
Maksik: Once I’ve found the subject for a novel, I treat the work the way I’d treat any other. Which is to say that I write with discipline and on a schedule. I don’t use an outline. I just start writing, which allows for the kind of wildness and emotion I’m hoping to inject into my work. But it also means that I’ll go through many drafts later. It’s not more complicated than that, which doesn’t make it easy. I just don’t think it’s all that complicated. Find a story. Write every day. Hope it works out. I’m wary of unique processes. For too long I didn’t write because I’d convinced myself that there was some magic pencil I hadn’t yet found, an absent muse, a secret system. As with any other discipline, the most successful writers are those who work the hardest. I always think of Chuck Close’s famous quip, “Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us get to work.” Can a fiction writer get too close to her work? I don’t think so. As I said before, without caring deeply, it’s just not worth the time.
Spring Issue 2018
