Danielle Evans, 2009
ICL: What authors/poets/books/poems/stories/writing do you return to again and again?
Danielle Evans: I have less time than I'd like to revisit things, because I always feel compelled to read things I haven't read yet, to keep up with new fiction and nonfiction. I do tend to read the Fire Next Time and The Bluest Eye about once a year. As I've been getting further into the novel writing process, I find myself sometimes returning to The Great Gatsby and A Prayer for Owen Meany, which strike me as books that are exceptionally well put together, and are useful when thinking about how to handle structural issues. When I am feeling drained, or find myself self-censoring or feeling blocked, I often return to Audre Lorde's poetry, especially A Litany for Survival.
ICL: What is your favorite and least favorite part of the writing process? The most surprising? The most challenging?
DE:I like starting new work, because there's always a bit of mystery involved—who are these characters, what are they doing, and how's it going to turn out, and I like finishing a first draft, because there's a very fleeting moment of feeling like you've finished something. I wouldn't call revision my least favorite part of the process, because it has its own set of mysteries and rewards, but it is the most challenging, and the most surprising—returning to work you thought you knew, and discovering how much else is contained in it.
ICL: What was the first piece of writing you ever wrote, and when?
DE: I don't remember the very first thing I ever wrote, but as a child I was driven toward morality tales. When I was about three I wrote on a paper napkin an illustrated list of rules called "How to be a Good Person." It hung on our refrigerator for many years.
ICL: Are certain techniques central to your writing?
DE: I've become increasingly conscious of and interested in voice, which is ultimately an extension of character.
ICL: Are certain themes central to your work?
DE: I try not to think on a thematic level until after the work is done. I am interested in what it means to be part of a family, I am interested in race and the lived experience of nonwhiteness in the contemporary U.S, I am interested in how women understand and express sexuality and sexual desire, and I am (this was a surprise to me until I realized how much time I spent writing about it) interested in the thin undercurrent of competition in so many close friendships. I like to think though that I'm interested in these themes first and foremost because the characters I'm drawn to are interested in them.
ICL: How have those themes changed over the years?
DE: They haven't especially.
ICL: How do your stories come to you? For example, is it by an image, character, line, phrase, idea?
DE:All of the above. Sometimes a story appears fully formed, but more often than not I start out with a small piece of it and have to figure out the rest. Sometimes that piece is a great sentence, and I have to figure out who's speaking it, or what's being described. Sometimes that piece is a really compelling character, and I have to figure out what's happening to them that's worth writing about. Sometimes it's a startling image and I need to know what it is and who's looking at it, and sometimes it's an idea—what if this happened? Or I'll read a true story and think well what if instead of it happening this way, it happened this other way, or instead of it happening to this person, it happened to this character who I've been looking for a story for?
ICL: Do you have a set writing schedule/any writing rituals?
DE:No. When a writer tells me he or she has a set writing routine I immediately (and unfairly) assume that person is lying to me. I do tend to work better in the middle of the night, which is probably part of why I lack a formal routine—it's hard to force yourself to plan ahead of time that you'll be awake and working at 2 am.
ICL: If your life had a theme song right now, what would it be?
DE: Hmm. Of late, I've been obsessively listening to covers of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and also Jay-Z's "Death of Autotune," but I suppose both of those are more soundtrack than theme song. I don't know that I could narrow it down to a single theme song, but I did once make a playlist involving nothing but Rihanna and Rilo Kiley that pretty much covered all of my emotional bases, and probably still does.
ICL: Tell us something about yourself that most people don't know.
DE: After a reading once, someone who'd heard me read brought me a photograph of a sculpture he'd made using (in part) several pints of his own blood. I have it hanging on my wall at home.
ICL: What projects are you working on right now?
DE: I am waiting for copyedits on my short story collection, and working on the middle of my novel, which is fun but also challenging because it involves a bit of messy alternative history. I'm also, apparently, writing a short story involving cocaine trafficking bike messengers, for which I blame Amtrak—every time I get stuck in a bus or train station, a short story happens to me.
ICL: If you weren't focused on writing, what would you be doing?
DE: My first interest is in people, and what makes them tick—if I weren't writing fiction, I'd probably want to be an anthropologist. If I had any visual talent, I'd love to be a photographer.
Excerpt from Robert E. Lee Is Dead
For making honor roll you got these stupid Mylar balloons. They were silver on the back and red or blue or pink on the front, with CONGRATULATIONS written in big clashing letters. The balloons were supplied by the army recruiters who had an office across the street from our football field, and they always stuck a green and white U.S Army sticker on the back. If you lived in Lakewood, then when you got a balloon your parents picked you up, or you drove yourself home with it in the backseat. Either way, when you got it home you waited for your balloon to deflate slowly, and when it finally did your mother smoothed out the wrinkles and put it on a wall, or in an album, or in a storage box somewhere, if you already had so many that another would be redundant. If you lived in Eastdale, then the stupid balloon got in your way the whole time you were walking home.
Geena Johnson and I lived in Eastdale. I knew her name already—everybody did—but Geena was a girl like sunlight; if you were a girl like I was back then, you didn't look at her directly. Usually there were girls following Geena's lead, often literally, wobbling behind her in platform boots they had just barely learned to walk in, but she was alone the first day she actually spoke to me. From the top of the hill where our high school began, I had seen her walking ahead of me, briskly and by herself. When she got to the chain link fence encircling the water dam at the bottom of the hill, Geena threw her backpack over it, balanced the heel of her boot against its wobbly exterior and expertly hoisted herself over, barely breaking stride. When I hopped the fence a few moments later, I took my time. Even in sneakers I was not as slick as Geena, and plus the balloon kept hitting the side of my face and trying to pop itself on the top of the fence. I was less awkward crossing the high, rickety bridge that was probably the reason the water dam shortcut was closed off to begin with. I took some perverse pleasure in knowing that a fall at the right angle could have killed me, one slip, and no more Crystal.
On the other side of the dam, home surprised me. I always took a minute to recognize my own neighborhood. It seemed like every day a new apartment building was being built, or an older store or house torn down. Things changed quickly in those years; Eastdale pushed into the suburb of Lakewood from one side, while white flight created suburbs of the suburbs on the other. This was the new New South, same rules, new languages. The people who could afford to leave Lakewood left; the ones who couldn't put up better fences. The rest of us were left in Eastdale—old houses, garden apartments, signs in Spanish and Vietnamese. We adapted well enough; we could all curse in Spanish and we'd skip school for noodle soup as soon as we'd skip for McDonalds. The handful of white kids who still lived in Eastdale adopted linguistic affectations with varying degrees of success and would have nothing to do with the Lakewood kids. Eastdale kids and Lakewood kids walked on opposite sides of the hallway and ate on opposite sides of the cafeteria and probably would have worn opposite colored clothes if they could have coordinated it without communicating. The neighborhood in the immediate vicinity of our high school was called The Crossroads; don't ever let anyone tell you that the south is big on subtlety.
