Amber Sparks on Chipping Away and Good Advice
This interview is part of our Epiphany 10 interview series with author illustration by Kendra Allenby. Amber Sparks is this year’s Prose Guest Judge for our 2020 Beakout 8 Writers Prize, currently open for submissions.
Epiphany: William Trevor began his adult life as a sculptor and later described his writing as chipping away at a block of marble. Are you a chipper or a builder? In other words, do you chip away at a block of writing, or are you more methodical, building up the block brick by brick?
Amber Sparks: I'm a chipper! I hate writing, but I love editing, so I typically throw a bunch of random words on a page without thinking about them too much. Only through editing does my voice come through. My first drafts are absolute garbage—Trevor's blocks of marble, if you will.
EP: What was your first publication?
AS: It was actually a poetry magazine! It doesn't exist anymore but it was called Lumberyard Magazine—it was a beautiful print magazine. I was a poet before I was a fiction writer.
EP: What are five books you are reading or thinking about now?
AS: Oh, let's see—I'm reading Susan Howe's Midnight, speaking of poetry, which is full of ghosts. I just read Raven Leilani's novel Luster, which is a really incredible debut, and the voice! She's so good. I read Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist last year, but I am re-reading it now, and my husband is reading it too. I just bought the book he wrote for children for my daughter, Antiracist Baby, and I'm excited to get that in the mail. I'm also reading a bunch of books about fairies and dollhouses for novel research. And re-reading Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones for like the hundredth time.
EP: If you had to inhabit a fictional world, what would it be (i.e., the environment of which novel, short story, poem, song, etc.)?
AS: It depends if you had to live there forever or if you could just visit? I'd love to visit Hemingway's Paris in the 20s but not live there, pre-antibiotics and contact lenses. I think I'd like to live in a Miyazaki film, one of the really gentle ones. Maybe Castle in the Sky?
EP: What's the most interesting day job you've had?
AS: I've had so many. Life drawing model? Used car salesman? Makeup artist? Definitely not telemarketing, which sucks the life from your bones.
EP: You're a committed short story writer, but you've mentioned you've worked on novels, on and off. What is it that you prefer about the short story, and why?
AS: I think the glib but also true answer is that I get bored very easily! I prefer to experiment with form and structure in a way that isn't necessarily sustainable in a long project. That said, I am working on a novel, though mostly I'm just letting it be a mess right now. It's hard to let something stay bad and messy for so long—poetry and flash fiction are much easier in that regard. I feel I can see the shape of them much easier and much sooner.
EP: What's the best advice on writing you've received?
AS: I really love Richard Hugo's advice, that if you want to write about your town, then you have to go to another town and write about that town—and that's how you can write honestly about your own.
EP: How do you work? Are you disciplined? Undisciplined? Do you have fits and starts of writing mania, or are you slower and more methodical?
AS: Oh, terribly undisciplined. I've never been the writer who sits down at a desk in the morning and writes every day—I just couldn't. I have gotten better about it, and less precious—letting myself write on my phone, for example, rather than needing a perfect environment. But I've always had a day job, and sometimes several, and now I have a kid too—and with the coronavirus on top of everything else, I'm just trying to be very, very forgiving. It's hard because I have the fits and starts method, and once a year, I go away for a week to just write, and it's incredibly exhausting and productive, but I don't know that I'll be able to do that this year. But we're all doing the best we can, now—I can't imagine anyone is truly productive.
EP: In a nutshell, what are you working on now?
AS: Two projects, really—the novel, which is a long and ongoing project, and a book proposal for a non-fiction book that I'm really excited about. I'm also working on a novella and some short stories, because I'm never not writing those. I'd typically be working on freelance pieces too, but I feel a bit less pressure to write those pieces at the moment.
EP: What's an interview question you've never been asked that you wish had been asked of you?
AS: Have you ever quit writing? Because I did, for five years! And I was fine! And the world just went on. If people hate writing and the process and it just makes them totally miserable, it's okay to quit! You can always start again.
Amber Sparks is the author of the short story collections The Unfinished World and Other Stories and I Do Not Forgive You, which have received praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The Paris Review, among other publications. She is also the author of a previous short story collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies, as well as the co-author of a hybrid novella with Robert Kloss and illustrator Matt Kish, titled The Desert Places. She's written numerous short stories and essays which have been featured in various publications and across the web. Find them at ambernoellesparks.com, and say hi to her on Twitter at @ambernoelle.
