Thanks so much, Meg. I'm thrilled to have Body Scan featured in Connotation Press. I'm glad the structure worked for you. The story started with the body scan porn, with that pivotal moment: when a wife discovers a husband's utter fixation not on average everyday porn but on the naked scans of strangers from airport security machines - where does one go from there? I built it out from that point. Sure, it's a before/after story but instead of that cracking everything open it's also a story of confinement. When I wrote this, I was on a real containment kick, where maybe a window cracks, air rushes in (i.e. conversation from Ruby), but ultimately the story closes back on itself. This is one of those. Maybe that's frustrating to read. The narrator is stuck. Putting her in a car in bumper to bumper traffic made metaphorical sense - it also gives it that boxed effect - which is how I arrived at the structure.

 

Ha, thanks. I wrote this story last year, soon after the increased security and use of advanced imaging technology machines became protocol at nationwide airports. When was that, Thanksgiving? People were freaking out about the breach of civil liberties and invasion of privacy while traveling, of course, but then all these images were leaked, and suddenly, there was a rash of strip-searched strangers on the Internet. At the time, I was looking at a lot of fetishes (balloons, furries, blow-up dolls, etc) in my stories so this felt like kismet. Certainly, from the point of character it was irresistibly revealing. To draw a man obsessed with anonymous outlines of people, of strangers passing through? Once that thought took I was done.

 

I'm not sure. Different things. Sometimes, it's a line in my head that plays on repeat with increased urgency until I figure I better see what it's about. An image salvaged from a dream. Chalk on the sidewalk. This one, as I said, came from body scans. The news. Sure, thematically there is stuff I tend to chew on, that I continue to work through and question. Common bones. But usually material boils down to its staying power. My mind can be a cheap porous cup, so if an idea passes through it as fast as it comes - I'm not great about whipping out a notebook -  I move on. I used to beat myself up, and certainly, I could stand to be more diligent about getting things down - but it's likely that whatever I thought was worth keeping didn't have enough meat. But if something lingers. Or returns. I once wrote a story ten years after one of its sentences first occurred to me - it kept cycling back until I couldn't ignore it. Right now that's happening with character. I have three rather noisy and persistent voices vying for attention, so I've made enough notes to put them into stories, hopefully, eventually. But I also know as soon as I start folding that element into the framework of a story the original substance may change or melt away or become something else entirely. So it's important never to marry the thing as it first appears but to stay open to possibility. I wouldn't call it inspiration so much as curiosity. Why does something grab me? I don't know, but I want to know, so I'll trick myself for long enough to stumble down that path.

 

 

Have we still not figured out how to make the day longer? There's never enough time, and my management skills are lousy. I can be painfully slow - or rather, I spew fast but then shape and whittle and pluck and prune forever - so days never feel terribly productive. My finger constantly rests on the "abort mission" switch, and I've the very real feeling that I've developed adult-onset ADHD - is that possible? - which is a long way of saying I'm all over the place. Juggling. I work when my kids are at school, and a couple nights a week I try to steal some hours when everyone's asleep. That's for everything - writing, editing, freelance stuff, Sunday Salon, and of course, all of my favorite online procrastination vices.

 

Mary Karr's memoir, LIT, which I've been visiting in brief spells over a long stretch of time. Laura van den Berg's collection, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us. A new novel slated for review. Oh, and I'm re-reading The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, who I'm very excited to host at the Sunday Salon in February.

 

 

The question of influence always leads me to the question of who made me want to write in the first place. That answer lies in childhood. Early on, I.B. Singer and Malamud turned me on to the magic of storytelling. In high school, Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and Salinger's Nine Stories became Bibles. I decided to major in creative writing after reading Jayne Anne Phillips' Black Tickets first semester freshman year. Then, like a good co-ed the modernists got me drunk on language. Woolf, Joyce, Stein, etc. They remain important. Early Roth and Salinger are constants. But then, I don't know. It changes. There's Tillie Olsen. I'm crazy for the fierce anti-sentimentalism of Richard Yates.

 

 

Stories, mostly. The occasional review. Freelance magazine work. Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water in LEGOS (if my son lets me help.)

 

Thank you so much, Sara, for your insights and incredible writing! And congratulations on all your Pushcart prize nominations. Well-deserved! We are honored to be featuring your work for the month of January!! Starting off 2012 with a BANG!!!