Fear, loathing and the longing to be published

A conversation with R.L. Maizes about her novel, A Complete Fiction

Before we begin…

If you are or know some writers: have you ever found yourself or a story you’ve shared in the pages of someone’s book? If you ARE a writer, how have you used material that has come your way from those you know? In either case, what happened afterwards?

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The dark side of being a writer

If I have ever tampered with the career of another person, I’m blocking on that memory. But I am no stranger to professional jealousy or the anxiety of spending years writing a novel while reading about the successes of writers who started when I did or, worse, a publishing announcement for a novel that touches on the very same subject I am exploring.

Thankfully, those pangs are fleeting and they were far more intense with my debut novel which was – gulp – published nearly ten years ago. I had understanding friends, writers and non-writers, to whom I could talk. I learned, too, that as long as I was actually writing, I could lose myself in the problem solving, the creativity, or the research that writing a novel involves. I always felt worse after going on social media where I felt like a wallflower at a party where everyone else was witty, smart, earnest, or already famous. All of these conflicting feelings came flooding to the forefront as I read R.L. Maizes latest novel, A Complete Fiction

In A Complete Fiction, two writers who have slaved without success for years collide. George Dunn, the editor of a small independent press, rejects a novel that he admires by P.J. Larkin because her subject skates so close to the subject of his own book. Both are “me-too” stories with unique takes. When George sells his novel, it is to one of the big guns in publishing. When P.J., who drives for a ride-share company to keep body and soul together, reads the publishing announcement she recognizes his name from her rejection letter and how the summary of his book is so similar to hers. When, between gigs, she fires off an angry post on the social media platform, Crave, a stand-in for Twitter, she ignites a controversy that forces both P.J and George to confront the question of who owns a story and how much each is willing to risk to defend their choices. They also must face their own motives and secret hungers and to decide what success really looks like.

In the hands of R.L. Maizes, the story is smart, witty, and soulful - not a surprise for those who have read her earlier novel Other People’s Pets, or her collection of stories, We Love Anderson Cooper. As I wrote in this post over the summer, this novel may be set in the world of writing and publishing but the very human conflicts and questions exist in every endeavor.

“Passengers would sometimes share intimate details of their lives with P.J. as she shuttled them from one place to another. Affairs. Costly mistakes at work. But when a rider named Franklin said, apropos of nothing and with an air of resignation, “I killed my wife,” it was a first.” - Opening paragraph of A Complete Fiction by R.L. Maizes.

A Complete Fiction launched on November 4. It’s available wherever books are sold. It’s author, R.L. Maizes talks a bit more about what went into this book in our Q&A below. Enjoy. I have two spare copies of this terrific novel. To enter the drawing for one of them, just comment or share this post. I’ll pick a name at random at 9 A.M Pacific Time on Saturday, November 22.

The novel’s journey

First, the obvious question: what was the inspiration for this novel? Why did you find it compelling? What were the toughest hurdles to get past in order to write it (if any)?

I write about my obsessions, and I’d become obsessed with something I saw happening over and over, which was people trying to cancel an author on social media after reading a two-sentence blurb about the author’s book. Not even a chapter, just a brief blurb the author may not even have written. That seemed as reasonable to me as torching a restaurant because you don’t like the olive in your martini. I used to be a lawyer and I care about fairness, and I didn’t think that was fair to those writers. I wanted to start a conversation about it, and one way to do that is through fiction.

The toughest hurdle in writing the book was finding a balance between the story and the message. The story always has to be the dog and the message the tail even though the message is the impetus for the book.

As a writer, there were times when I actually uttered the word “ouch” as I read. In A Complete Fiction, you fearlessly explore the doubts, hopes, the ambition, envy, joy, and compromises that come with the decision to invest fully as a writer – particularly in today’s social media environment. All of it was familiar to me and, I’m guessing, to you. How did you manage these very issues as you wrote the novel? Were there times when they were uncomfortable or challenging to write about?

I’m glad you felt something while reading it, even if what you felt was a bit of discomfort. One of the ways I managed the social media aspect while writing the book was to pull back from social media. I had left Twitter a few years before, and while writing the novel, I blocked Facebook and Instagram on my computer so I would be less distracted. As for the feelings and struggles described in the book, they were all very familiar to me. I suppose writing about them would have been more uncomfortable and I would have felt more exposed if I didn’t know that those feelings and struggles are widespread among writers. Also, I’ve been examining writerly struggles–rejection, envy, compromise–for years, often in the form of short humor pieces. This was just a bit longer.

“What keeps me going despite the difficulties–because as any writer knows, the journey is not without challenges and heartache–is a compulsion to tell stories and the absorption I feel when I’m working. That’s when I know I’m where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” - R.L. Maizes

Whose story is it, anyway?

One of the most compelling aspects of A Complete Fiction was the way you show how a writer’s decision impacts other people – friends and, especially, family – and how these important relationships impact what they write about. Both P.J. Larkin, the protagonist, and George Dunn, her inadvertent nemesis, face the decision to write what they are compelled to write or give in to family and other pressures to sacrifice their work. How has this played out in your own life?

I’ve had family members object to things I’ve written. Because I value those relationships, I’ve limited my nonfiction writing. With fiction, I can disguise stories that have a personal origin. That said, I once wrote a story about a couple that fights over the affections of a cat. The story was inspired by a dog I adored shifting her affections to my then-boyfriend, now husband. My husband wasn’t fooled.

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By the time you finished this novel, how did you see the issue of who owns a story and gets to write it?

In the book, I explore the nuances of that question. I don’t think there’s one answer. It seems to me, context is everything. Each situation is different. In the novel, P.J. takes something that happened to her sister as the inspiration for a novel. The actual story is largely her sister’s and in some ways P.J.’s. P.J. disguises the story. The more a writer disguises the actual events and moves away from them, the more it becomes the writer’s story as a product of their imagination. At some point, the actual events become less important than the contribution of the writer’s subconscious and the creative work of the writer.

Form and function

Along with the occasional “ouch” of recognition that came as I read A Complete Fiction, came lots of moments when I smiled or just laughed out loud thanks to your wit and the way you can use something as simple as a brief family dinner scene to show volumes about P.J. How have you honed that ability to say so much with relatively little? You’ve written short fiction, essays, and two novels. Do you love one kind of writing more than another?

I’ve never been the kind of fiction reader who enjoys a lengthy description of a tree. I’ve always appreciated brevity. So I try to write that way. I started out writing short stories and that teaches you economy. I don’t love one kind of writing more than another. Some story ideas lend themselves to long forms, while others couldn’t sustain a novel, nor would I want to live with certain stories for years like you have to when writing a novel.

Some stories are best told true, so I write essays about them. I wanted to write about euthanizing my elderly dog because killing an animal you love is so powerful and confusing. I tried to write an essay about it and then a short story but neither worked. I couldn’t seem to find a form to contain the experience until I wrote a poem about it. I don’t know how successful the poem was but it helped me to write it and I’ve heard from some readers that it helped them, too. These days, I mostly write novels because there’s more of a public appetite for them. Also, I was under the misimpression that it paid well.

Adventures in research

A research question: have you, like your protagonist P.J., driven for a ride-share company? What sorts of research did you have to do for A Complete Fiction?

I haven’t driven for a rideshare company. At first, I researched the rules of several well-known rideshare companies. Then I realized that Ride With Me, the rideshare company in the novel, is a fictional company, and I could invent whatever rules I liked! That is the beauty of fiction. I researched what it was like to be a senate page, as George was. I researched sexual assaults in the Capitol and throughout society, and how survivors reacted. I researched certain kinds of therapy, New York Mets schedules, and how to make a hook rug, though I’d made those when I was younger. That’s a very incomplete list. When you’re writing realist fiction, there’s always a lot to research.

The writer’s journey

Tell us about your own journey as a writer. How did you get started? What keeps you going? What are you working on now?

When I was young, I dreamed of being a writer. Somehow, I became a lawyer instead. Probably because I wanted to eat. I forgot my dream for a few decades. Then someone close to me died suddenly and I understood in a visceral way that our time on this Earth is limited and if you want to do something you have to do it now. I knew if I didn’t try to become a writer, I’d regret it. I joined a local writing group, whose members were more advanced, but put up with me. I enrolled in workshops and craft classes at a fantastic community writing school here in Colorado called Lighthouse Writers. Look them up. They offer online classes, too. I took workshops there with Steve Almond, Rebecca Makkai, Robin Black, and other luminaries. I met both of my mentors through Lighthouse. I’ve also used developmental editors to help me improve my manuscripts and to learn more about how to structure stories and novels.

What keeps me going despite the difficulties–because as any writer knows, the journey is not without challenges and heartache–is a compulsion to tell stories and the absorption I feel when I’m working. That’s when I know I’m where I’m supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing. My new project is a novel about antisemitism and vigilantism.

Four-leggeds and the writer

Last but not least: you love and respect animals. Even this novel, which is not really focused on animals, features a memorable dog. How have your pets over the years helped or hurt your writing? I ask this as a loving person to two dogs who don’t necessarily appreciate the quiet time I ask for when I write in the morning.

Often we get the dog out for a walk first thing in the morning, so she’s happy to crash on the loveseat in my office and take a nap while I work. It’s quite calming to look over and see her there, with no deadlines to meet, definitely not checking the past tense of lie for the bazillionth time.

More about R.L. Maizes

R.L. Maizes is the author the novel A Complete Fiction, out November 4. Maizes’s debut novel, Other People’s Pets, won the 2021 Colorado Book Award in Fiction and was a Library Journal Best Debut of Summer/Fall 2020. She is also the author of the short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper. Her stories have aired on National Public Radio and can be found in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and in The Best Small Fictions 2020. Maizes’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and have aired on NPR. She is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow and the recipient of a Fellowship Grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for 2024-2025 for her novel-in-progress. Maizes lives in Niwot, Colorado, with her husband, Steve, and her muses: Rosie, a dog who spent her first year homeless in South Dakota and thinks Colorado is downright balmy, and the ghost of Arie the Cat. Find out more about her at RLMaizes.com and read some of her funniest short pieces for Electric Literature here.

And if you’re looking for some salad inspiration…

I have two free one-month subscriptions to emily nunn ‘s The Department of Salad. I read it because I love salad and I love Emily Nunn’s crisp, colorful take on life outside the salad bowl as well as in it. A trip through the archives alone will inspire you.

If you are interested, comment below to let me know. If there are more than two takers, I’ll do an additional random drawing next Saturday when I draw the winners for my giveaway of R.L. Maizes’ A Complete Fiction.

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Gratefully yours,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Arie the cat, a muse and a memory from R.L. Maizes

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”:

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

And remember, if you like what you see or it resonates with you, please share Spark with a friend and take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!

Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”

What is YOUR moment of Zen? Send me your photos, a video, a drawing, a song, a poem, or anything with a visual that moved you, thrilled you, calmed you. Or just cracked you up. This feature is wide open for your own personal interpretation.

Come on, go through your photos, your memories or just keep your eyes and ears to the ground and then share. Send your photos/links, etc. to me by replying to this email or simply by sending to: elizabethmarro@substack.com. The main guidelines are probably already obvious: don’t hurt anyone -- don’t send anything that violates the privacy of someone you love or even someone you hate, don’t send anything divisive, or aimed at disparaging others. Our Zen moments are to help us connect, to bond, to learn, to wonder, to share -- to escape the world for a little bit and return refreshed.

I can’t wait to see what you send!

One last reminder: if you like what you see or it resonates with you, please share Spark with a friend and take a minute to click the heart ❤️ below - it helps more folks to find us!