TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!
Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?
The
book is a collection of linked stories that both tell the story of a pregnant
graduate student separated from her wife and form an inventory of the Florida
panhandle. The biggest question in the book is what it means to fight the land
for a home, and how that fighting with a place can actually make you fall in
love with it.
Which
story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most
trouble, and why?
My
favorite story in the collection is probably “Insect Killer.” I love stories
that challenge me, and “Insect Killer” contains three separate encounters with
three separate kinds of ants, all serving as metaphors for different phases of
the character’s time in Florida. So it’s my favorite story, and yet also the
most challenging—kind of like the Florida landscape where I encountered all of
those ants!
Tell
us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.
This
book was purely a work of personal art. I wrote it for myself—to document all
of the strange and wonderful (and very terrible!) things I had experienced
during my time in Tallahassee. It’s an interesting book in that it’s part
nonfiction—almost all of the natural details are drawn from my time there—and
part fiction, because the characters and relationships are completely
fabricated. (Writing a story where the partner is 100% supportive does not make
for good fiction!) Then I sent it off to some chapbook contests, since
chapbooks are hard to publish outside of dedicated venues, and never really
thought much about it. I love Split/Lip and have been a fan of theirs
for many years, but I certainly didn’t think they would select my book! There
are so many wonderful authors who submit! What a reinforcement of the idea that
writers must first and foremost write for themselves, and write the stories
that they need to tell, even if they don’t necessarily have a publication plan,
because you never know whether a book will sell or whether it will sit on your
computer for all of eternity.
What’s
your favorite piece of writing advice?
Writing
should be fun. I certainly have written books that have challenged me or gotten
me stuck for a while, but overall, I think that writing should be an enjoyable
process—whatever that means to you. It’s not financially rewarding enough to
spend time doing it otherwise. In my classes, I have my students do a ton of
creative exercises, from acting out their battle scenes to drawing weapons on
pieces of paper and then exchanging them. I have to break them out of their
high school mindset of the five-paragraph essay, and out of their fear of
producing something a teacher might tell them isn’t right. I want them to start
at the point of silly-fun, and only after that, when they’re sitting there
smiling at their papers, do I move them to emotionally-challenging-but-still-fun.
My
favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What
surprised you in the writing of this book?
The
ending surprised me. I often don’t know the endings of my books—or I know only
the beginning and ending but literally nothing between those two points. I
don’t want to give anything away, but I wasn’t sure whether these characters
would stay in Florida or not, and I was fascinated to find out what path they
chose.
How
do you approach revision?
So
revision is basically my worst enemy. I hate it. I read about writers who
describe how much they’ve come to love revision over time, and…I’m not one of
them. I basically live in a book while I’m writing it, and then, when I finish
it, it’s dead to me. This is not to say I think my books are perfect—far from
it! I just am willing to write a book that doesn’t work, acknowledge that a few
months later, and then put it in a computer folder, never to be read by anyone
but me. If I really, really, really care about a book enough to revise it, I
have to start the book over from the beginning. On the plus side, this makes me
a very easy writer to work with during the editing process—an editor suggests a
revision, and, having moved on and completely distanced myself from the work, I
can apply that revision as suggested with very few exceptions. Some people use
short stories to practice their craft—I just happen to use novels and
collections as well.
Inquiring
foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your
book? (Any recipes I might share?)
I
wish! There’s an apple pie in the book, but it’s store-bought, which is an
important detail in that story. I ate so many wonderful foods in my time down
south—my favorite was the shrimp & grits and hush puppies from Jonah’s in Thomasville, Georgia,
which is pretty close to Tally—but as a part-time single parent when my partner
was in Virginia and full time PhD student, I didn’t have much time to cook!
***
READ
MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.kellyannjacobson.com
ORDER
THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.splitlippress.com/an-inventory-of-abandoned-things