Matter of Craft with Alyssa Songsiridej
In this installment of Matter of Craft, Alyssa Songsiridej , author of Little Rabbit, chats about being captivated by dance, writing sex scenes, feeling immersed in story, writing her novel to cope with pandemic and unemployment stress, locking away your phone and working at Electric Literature.
I find the genesis of any writing project interesting, so I was curious what first sparked the idea for Little Rabbit?
A couple of different things went into Little Rabbit. In the fall of 2019, I went to a residency where I overlapped with a choreographer and his dancers, and I got to see them perform and make new movement. I was completely stunned. To use your body to make this incredible art, this fantastic moment that’s limited to time and space. It seemed as far from writing as possible, and I knew I wanted to try to write about dance and get close to what felt like an indescribable experience.
Another thing is–and I’ve said this a lot but I think it bears repeating–I always wanted to write a book where a woman lusts after a man and it doesn’t destroy her life. I didn’t want her to be punished, and I wanted to center her desire in literary fiction. And then, I’m also a fan of the relationship therapist Esther Perel. I was really struck by a chapter of her book, Mating in Captivity, about strong feminist women who feel guilty or ashamed of their desire to be dominated by men in bed. How they struggle to reconcile their political, public-facing selves with their desires. I wanted to write a book about a woman with these struggles, to really empathetically and fully inhabit and depict her experience. Once I had all those pieces, the book came together quickly–the dance element, desire, embodiment and expression and art.
Writing sex scenes is tough to say the least. It is often a topic of conversation within the writing community; what makes sex work in the narrative, how to render it correctly, etc. I thought you did a particularly good job in this book, especially when writing BDSM scenes. I would love to know your approach for writing sex.
Thank you! I think part of our struggle with writing sex is that we’re looking for a set of rules. Do’s and Don’ts, that kind of thing. We’re looking for a band-aid, when really the issue is that we have to get beyond our cultural assumptions about the meaning of sex, especially certain kinds of sex. Otherwise, we’re not going to be able to write sex in a way that’s necessary or naturall for a story, or for the characters.
So ultimately my approach to writing a sex scene is the same approach as writing any other scene. I try to really pay attention to what the characters want, and how they’re expressing or failing to express it, and how those wants bump up against each other. It’s the same questions and craft issues at the dinner table as in bed.
What did your writing routine look like when writing Little Rabbit? Can you take us through a day in the life?
The time I was writing Little Rabbit was very unusual. It was very early lockdown–like spring 2020–and I didn’t have anything to do, and my work at the time had all dried up because of the pandemic. I ended up going on emergency pandemic unemployment for a little bit. I’ve never had that much free time in my life, and I’ll never have it again. So I was writing all day in a way that I don’t usually have the stamina for. I became completely obsessed with the story–I basically moved into it–and I’d only take breaks to feed myself or go on little walks.
Also, I was feeling really down at the time. I want to emphasize that. I don’t want it to be like “Oh, I was SO productive during the pandemic.” Writing Little Rabbit was how I coped, and it kept me in touch with what the world was like before, what I knew that we were losing.
Now, I just try to write every day, even if it’s just a little bit, and usually in the morning before email starts to get in the way.
How long did it take you to write Little Rabbit? Did you work solely on your novel or did you take breaks to write other short pieces? I’m always so curious how writers divide their time in the midst of something as weighty as a novel!
I usually toggle between things, but with Little Rabbit it was one straight shot. It took about three months to get the first draft done, working all day and not doing anything else. And then I went through a pretty lengthy revision process. I write everything by hand at first–including Little Rabbitso then I have to type everything up and that usually means rewriting the book completely. Then I print it out, read, and usually make a ton of edits.
Can you tell us about your role as editor at Electric Literature? How has that impacted your writing life and yourself as a writer?
I’m the managing editor at Electric Literature. We’re a small non-profit, so we all wear lots of different hats. I handle grants and advertising, and I also read year-round member submissions for Recommended Reading, our longform short fiction magazine and respond with a personal note in 3 months, instead of our usual 6-8 months (our membership program is an awesome resource for writers and you should check it out). I also select excerpts of forthcoming books, and I’ve begun editing original short fiction as well.
It’s an incredible experience, and it’s the perfect counterbalance to the loneliness of being a writer. For my day job, I get to work on a literary project with a great team and learn about fiction from my colleagues. I feel incredibly lucky.
That said, I try to keep my editor self locked as far away from my writer self as possible, until the very last stage in the revision process. Because my writer self really needs a sense of freedom and permission to work, just tons and tons of free range, whereas my editor brain is much more focused on immediate problems, on nitty-gritty of writing. If I let the editor in too early, it totally destroys everything.
As a debut author, what advice do you have for aspiring writers? What advice did you hold on to throughout your process that helped you?
Buy a timed lockbox for your phone and buy a way to block the internet temporarily on your computer. Really. (Let’s be real–Focus Mode doesn’t work!) Thousands of computer engineers devote their entire working lives to making you stare at the internet–your willpower can’t compete, and it’s fine to acknowledge that and do what you need to do to buy back space for writing.
Don’t be a jerk. Don’t worry about what you think you “ought” to be writing–do the writing you’re excited about, the work that gets you up in the morning. And remember that publishing and writing are different things. It’s the writing that adds up to your life.
What are some new books coming out that are on your radar at the moment?
Nuclear Family by Joseph Han, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (of course!), If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar, Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Issac Fitzgerald.
Alyssa Songsiridej is a fiction writer from the Midwest who now lives on the East Coast. Her first novel, Little Rabbit, was published by Bloomsbury. She is also an editor at Electric Literature. A 5 under 35 honoree, she lives in Philadelphia.
