Interview: Nadia Bulkin
So, here we are, folks—the last interview of this little series I’ve been doing the past several months. I can’t think of a more fitting end to this interview series, either: Nadia Bulkin is an incredible author whose fiction challenges and inspires me, and I’m honored to share her interview with you all.
Nadia’s horror fiction is unique in that it frequently speaks to pressing socio-political issues (Nadia holds a B.A. in Political Science from Barnard College and an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service); her short stories—especially those in her excellent Shirley Jackson Award-nominated debut collection, She Said Destroy—entertain and horrify while also making you think. Just check out two of my favorite stories of hers—”Intertropical Convergence Zone” and “The Five Stages of Grief”—to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about.
Nadia has graciously taken time away from her writing to answer the following questions:
What is your personal writing process like?
I spend a lot of time ruminating over a story before I start writing, which is critical to making the rest of my process work. I make a playlist that fits the story's theme and mood. I slowly and deliberately pick names for characters and places. I divide short stories into five parts, and I always outline. I outline for three reasons: 1) I tend to lose control of the story if I don't see all the plot points laid out next to each other; 2) I'm too antsy to write stories in order, and an outline lets me work on whatever part I want, when I want; 3) Outlines make it easier to dip in and out of the story. I once wrote a story straight out of the outline, on my phone, during lunch breaks at work. Not recommended, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
How big a part does reading play in your writing life?
Not as big as it should these days, to be honest. I absolutely think that writers need to read, if anything to see what other people are doing with language and structure; I just struggle to find the time to. Usually, I'm either in the mood to read (input) or the mood to write (output), and given a choice, I usually push myself to write or research. But I'm not proud of this.
How do you cultivate your ideas?
I try to anchor a starter-idea, like a scene or a conflict or a threat, to an "arrow of meaning," which is my term for the high-level thematic idea that runs straight through a story—like, "people are willing to make costlier sacrifices than they think" or "home has a powerful inertia." Once I have both the starter-idea and the arrow of meaning, I can string other ideas onto the arrow using plot/character logic—what would lead to the central conflict, what would be the escalation of the idea, what ending would be true to the arrow?
How do you get “unstuck” creatively?
Depends on the type of stuck. If I'm out of ideas, I ingest other media and see what I respond to in the moment. I jot down ideas as I get them, even if I don't pursue them right away—I'm a big believer in "the right idea for the right time"—so I scroll through those lists and see if anything speaks to me. If I'm stuck in the execution of a story, I go for walks, listen to music, and try to remind myself of what I'm actually trying to get across in a particular scene. Sometimes I try "telling" the story out loud to myself to try to stop spinning my wheels. In those situations, I'm trying to catch a mental foothold that will let me work my way back into the story—I often find that I'm holding onto a paragraph or event that I don't actually need.
What’s your go-to piece of writing advice?
The weird thing about "writing advice" is that it tends to come out sounding more like a "writing rule" or "writing principle," which is not the same thing as advice! Writing is so different for different brains that I think it's pointless to set out declarative statements of what is and isn't good practice. For example, "write every day"—I'd never write again if I forced myself to do that. If I put my "advice" hat on, I'd say, "Be kind to yourself as a person, but be brutally honest with yourself as a writer."
What story or book or poem inspired you to become a writer?
The Disney-fied version of The Prince and the Pauper is the story that made me want to tell stories. It was the first story I recited back to my mother. I'm sure it was partly down to timing—I couldn't actually write a whole story yet with a pen and paper, but I could grasp the idea of a long narrative. I also found the story itself exciting. I was a very melodramatic, adventure-centric writer as a kid. Big emotions and final battles and high stakes, just more, more, more. In terms of making me want to actually use the tools of writing, I'd probably credit [Joseph Heller’s] Catch-22 and [William Faulkner’s] The Sound and The Fury. I think those were the two books that made me realize that you could hit that really high level of supercharged emotion with not just plot points but specific words.
Where can people find you and your work online?
My website is https://nadiabulkin.wordpress.com - I try to keep it updated - and I spend most of my social media time on Twitter.
