Molly Prentiss: On Keeping the Creative Dream Alive, The Endless Search for Writing Time, Capitalist Expectations and Motherhood, and Her Second Novel ‘Old Flame’

I’ve been a fan of Molly Prentiss since I was an undergraduate creative writing student, and she was a graduate student at California College of the Arts. I can still remember the first time I heard her read — probably because I was still a highly impressionable aspiring poet from a small town desperate to stake out a literary life. In short, I was an insufferable literary wannabe with a soft spot for lyrical language you could get lost in. My college roommate and his friend had invited me to attend a thesis reading being put on by the graduate writing department (I believe those readings were formerly called Word. World.). I think Molly was a TA for one of them or maybe my roommate had been lucky enough to be invited to attend a graduate level course that she was in. The details around the event are murky, but what is important is that I was a wannabe poet, living in a major city for the first time in my life, not even 20 years old, and there I was sitting with a free glass of wine on Friday night, ears open for literature. It all felt like what I imagined a writerly life might be. Then came Molly in a black cocktail dress and chignon hairdo onstage, so classy, and when she started reading her work I felt myself take a deep inhalation with the rest of the audience. She’d hooked us and we were all holding our breath, hanging on her every word. It was poetic and lyrical and also somehow still fiction. It was one of the first pieces of writing I remember hearing that made me, an arrogant poet in training, think, hmm, maybe fiction is kind of cool after all. 

Years later, when I saw her first novel Tuesday Nights in 1980 was slated for publication, I instantly pre-ordered a copy for myself and my brother so we could book club it. Like most writers I know, I’m drawn to novels about artists and writers and the struggle to live a creative life. Molly has always had a knack for writing about the act of creating in a way that feels authentic. This was true in her first novel and it feels even more resonant in her second novel, Old Flame, which follows Emily, an aspiring writer, as she navigates the obstacles that stand between a person and creative living: capitalism, love, parenthood, and the self. Like many urban-dwelling creatives, Emily makes her living writing, but the copy she produces for a Manhattan Department store is a far cry from the creative writing she longs to fill her days with. When she meets Wes, a photographer who seems to have carved out a life sustained by art, she starts to believe her dreams aren’t as untenable as society makes them feel. But when Emily ends up pregnant, the absurd relationship between corporate culture and a meaningful life becomes ever more stark, and while Wes continues developing as an artist, Emily can’t help but be weighed down by obligation, and she questions whether things are the same for men and women endeavoring to forge creative lives. Old Flame is a novel about the struggle to live outside the norms of capitalism and all the ways we stand in our own way (and eventually get out our way) to make space for art and our own humanity.

I spoke with Molly via google docs about abandoning manuscripts, keeping the creative dream alive, and her second novel Old Flame.

Shelby Hinte: I’m a sucker for books about writers fighting for time to write amidst day jobs and the general chaos of being a human, so Old Flame definitely scratched a certain itch for me in this regard. What does your writing process look like, and how do you make space in your life for writing?

Molly Prentiss: This is the central question of the writing life, for so many of us! I have almost always had a “day job” — like the main character, Emily, I work as a copywriter — so I am endlessly searching for ways to configure these facets of my work life to create the optimal balance. I have worked full time, I have worked part time, I have freelanced, I have started my own business, I have hustled, I have gigged. I still haven’t totally figured out the secret equation, but I have learned things about my own process that I’ve come to trust. I try to incorporate personal writing into my daily life, whether it’s noodling on a novel or creatively captioning an Instagram post, but I also know that it’s not the end of the world if I don’t. Whole seasons pass where I am too busy with money-making work and childrearing to write anything of note, and I’ve come to be okay with that — I know that I will always find my way back. I also know that the way I really get things done is in long, extended bursts of solitude and focus. This used to happen at writing residencies, where I would escape to work for weeks or months at a time. I haven’t done that since I had my daughter, but the Covid lockdown provided the same type of environment for me, in a way. No one was asking me to do any work, or to hang out, and aside from parenting, my only job was to write. To get to the good stuff, I have to have space to be transported, to be free, to be bored, to be a little bit unhinged. 

SH: Can you share a little bit about how Old Flame came to be?

MP: The seed for Old Flame was planted when I wrote a short story titled Eravamo Noi (which translates to It Was Us in Italian), in 2019; it was later published in the LA Review of Books in 2020. I wrote it in one breathy sitting, in a postpartum haze, when I was supposed to be using my precious childcare hours to finish a freelance copywriting project. The piece is really about the fundamental rub between capitalist expectations and motherhood (and womanhood, and personhood). I began to feel this intense dissonance between the things I was doing for money (selling stuff) and the things I was doing as a mother and caregiver (literally keeping a human alive). One didn’t leave room enough for the other. The two obligations were at war with each other, and I was in the crosshairs. 

Up until this point, I had been working on an entirely different manuscript, but it wasn’t coming together; I couldn’t get it right. I began to channel the energy I felt from this story I’d written into a new, private document — one I thought would never see the light of day. When Covid hit — we moved to upstate New York around this time — I set up shop in a garden shed on our new property and dove into this private project head on. Once I started, I didn’t stop. The book came out like one, long exhale, as if it had been living inside of me. Of course there were many years of honing and editing to follow, but those locked down months allowed the thread of the story to unwind rapidly, as if I had dropped the spool from a great height. I finally got up the guts to show it to my editor, and the private work became the thing that would be published. 

SH: It's cool to hear that Old Flame began with a short story. The novel consists of a lot of short chapters, many of which feel like they could be standalone stories (or flash fiction stories) themselves. What was your process like for writing and organizing the book?

MP: I really love writing short little ramblings or musings, almost like prose poems, and this structure allowed me to do that within the bigger framework of the novel. I used a very intuitive approach as I wrote, tugged on threads that arose naturally for me, following my curiosity or interest down little narrative paths. (This is part of the joy of working in the first person — you can follow the trajectory of your narrator’s mind, and your own, with a different kind of fluidity.) In a few cases, I pulled in short pieces I’d written entirely separately, which felt very satisfying. The larger sections of the book, of which there are nine, are structured under these grandiose umbrella titles — Birth, Business, Pleasure, Pain, Glory, etc. — an idea that I stumbled upon about halfway through the writing process and immediately took much pleasure in. I liked how these titles attempted to categorize the totally uncategorizable things in life — the massive, existential question of our humanity. I found the irony, or impossibility, of actually putting life into these boxes to be both funny and poignant. There is a kind of tenderness in the attempt. 

SH: I like the idea of writing intuitively, but it also sounds a little scary. You say you used a framework and I am wondering what this looked like. Did you create an outline or were you writing with a set of beats/plot points in mind?

MP: I find outlines and frameworks to be very inhibiting in the early stages of writing — when I know what is going to happen next, I quickly lose interest and momentum. So I usually write a first draft without much idea of the structure or arc, just trying to find out who the characters are and where they’ll lead me. Then, of course, I have to clean up the mess I’ve made. Editing is surely the hardest part of my process — I must go back into the work with a craft lens on, rearranging and rejiggering things so that they make sense from a story perspective. I focus on narrative drive, pacing, character deepening, and general logic, and I do start to use an outline at this point. I’m not sure if I’d recommend this way of working to other writers, as it can often feel like you’re doing a lot of backtracking or re-working. But I haven’t been able to find a way that works better for me. 

In Old Flame, the narrative depends less on plot points, or what “happens”, and more on how Emily changes emotionally with each of those points. So I used her internal world as the leading driver for the arc of the story. My notes and outlines would probably only make sense to me — they are lists of themes, messy diagrams of rising and falling action, or notebook pages full of edits I wanted to make. It’s not a clean process, I’ll say that. 

SH: I am curious about the abandoned manuscript too. What was it like to set it down and move on to something different?

MP: Ditching hundreds of pages and years of work has (unfortunately) become part of my process. It is terribly painful for a short while, when you discover or are told that the thing you’ve been toiling over is a lost cause. But I have come to realize that all the work I do as a writer, whether it gets published or stashed away on a harddrive I’ll never open again, is valuable. It always leads you somewhere, hopefully somewhere unexpected, entirely surprising. And when I look back, I am almost always grateful that those unfinished manuscripts never made it out into the world. Those books might not have been good, but they were good practice. 

SH: What has been the biggest lesson (either philosophically or craft-based) that you've learned from writing work that didn't work?

MP: The work is the work, and the writing itself is the prize. Publication, recognition, success — those things are wonderful, but mostly because they help you hold onto the original prize: the writing. When I am able to remember that (which can be so tricky because the idea of success is so seductive), I find that I am freer, looser, more comfortable in the process. I am free to write badly, to write something that never sees the light of day, to mess up and start over. That writing — the inevitable bad stuff — is part of the prize, too. 

SH: Old Flame really captures the discomfort of trying to be a human within capitalism. A lot of what Emily struggles with in the book is this feeling that work is fundamentally disruptive to her humanity. Her priorities are writing and caring for her baby. She needs a job in order to tend to these priorities, yet her job impedes her from tending to them. She also seems disturbed by how easily her peers accept this paradox of paying to live. In a way, she is seeking a less conventional way to live. I think this is true for most artists. How do you balance these two opposing forces?

MP: We live in a country and a system that is unsupportive — especially of women — in the most basic ways. Within this system, care work (and the whole idea of “care” as a concept) is utterly devalued. The needs of human bodies (especially women’s bodies) are deprioritized by corporate bodies, pushed to their limits to increase profits. Creativity, whether in the realm of art making or parenting or creating alternative ways to orient your life, is met with such intense resistance by the powers that be. You are absolutely right that the frustration (and fury) that I feel about these things is very present in this book. 

I have spent my adult life on the see-saw of making money and making art, and five years ago I added in the third bit of the balancing act when I had my first child. It can often feel impossible to toggle between these roles — worker, writer, mother — without the necessary support it would take to do so fluidly or sustainably. I long for subsidized childcare, acknowledgement and compensation for care work, extended parental leave, new visions for creative leave, and so much more systemic change that would enable mothers to step into their personal and creative power. In the meantime, articulating and writing about these things serves as a way to make visible these invisible predicaments. I hope that by sharing stories and experiences we can create more empathy and understanding, which will hopefully lead to some much needed societal revisions. 

SH: This idea of balancing art and life (including parenthood) seems especially precarious for women. A major frustration for Emily is that her partner is entitled to focus on his art in a way she can't. Even when he suggests she is free to do the same, there is a sense of obligation to care for others before caring for herself and her art that he just doesn't have. Why do you think women artists (or just women in general) feel this obligation? (I think what I am really asking is -- Why do you think it is so hard for women to just say, fuck it, I'm making art today. everyone else figure the rest out?)

MP: Women are socialized to be attuned to others’ needs in a way that men aren’t, as if a sense of responsibility is bred into them. Emily, like so many female artists and writers I know, puts her own creative work on the backburner until she has checked off every other obligation — paid work, family work, friendship work, etc. It can feel impossible to change this impulse, to prioritize one’s self or one’s work after spending a whole life doing the opposite. This is part of the invisible labor that women are tasked with: psychologically reprogramming themselves to tend to their own needs, desires, ambitions, and dreams. Emily will likely need to read many books, listen to hundreds of encouraging podcasts, and make many failed attempts, before successfully creating the boundaries around her creative practice that she needs to deepen it, and to deepen herself. 

SH: Yes, yes, yes! I agree it can feel impossible to prioritize creative work. How have you been able to mentally/emotionally prioritize your own creative work? 

MP: I have been lucky to have role models in my parents, who are both working creatives and have always supported my decisions, even when they are unconventional. This goes a long way, I think. To feel emotionally supported when you are deciding to value something that might not ever make you money or be “successful” is a total gift. They also taught me, by example, to give my full effort to my creative work in the same way I’d give it to a job. I treat this work like a job when I can, adding “writing time” to my list of “to-dos”, giving it equal or greater weight than my paid work (when possible). When it comes to organizing my paid work life, I try to take on just enough, so that I can be sure to leave space in my days/weeks for writing (again, when possible). I also try to make sure I have a physical space to write that is not the same space as my other life and work. This can be a library or a rented studio space or a garden shed (I have utilized all of these), but it needs to feel specific to writing, so that I can give my full concentration to the work and don’t feel distracted by other duties. Oh, and for a long time, especially when I was working full time jobs, I prioritized writing during my free time. On weekends, when my husband would want to go to the beach or see friends, I would choose to work. This was often painful, but I think it made the difference when trying to finish my first book. 

SH: There is this moment early on in the book that has really stuck with me. When Emily first meets Wes, she is drawn to him in part because of his creative lifestyle,

"Everyone else I knew had given up on their creative dreams, tabling them while they pursued more realistic careers at advertising agencies and tech start-ups and direct-to-consumer mattress brands. But not him." 

As I read this line I was nodding my head. A lot of creative people I grew up with and went to art school with are no longer nurturing creative dreams. This question is in 2 parts: 1. Why do you think so many creative people abandon creative dreams? 2. How do you keep the creative dream alive?

MP: The answer to part one of this question is probably different for everyone. Unfortunately, our society does not support artists financially or otherwise, so it can be very difficult to stay the course. I have known so many people who have gotten derailed by a day job, or by having kids, or by getting beaten down by rejection, or simply because they ended up wanting to take a different path. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that along with tenacity and sacrifice, there is a certain amount of luck and privilege in being able to continue to pursue your creative work. It can be completely impossible for some people to continue to dedicate their time (read: money) to their art practice if they are not being supported properly. 

For me, keeping the creative dream alive is not negotiable. My husband and I have pretty much oriented our lives around it. We have certainly given things up to keep this dream alive — living in the city, for one, or making consistent salaries, or going to the beach — but we always come back to the core belief that making art is valuable and important in our lives, and so we press on, despite the unfavorable odds. It doesn’t always work. There are dry spells and doubts and debts, but there is also a strong foundation under us, which is the conviction that we must continue to try.

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Molly Prentiss is the author of Old Flame, as well as her debut novel,Tuesday Nights in 1980, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine in France. Her writing has been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Red Hook, New York, with her husband and daughter. You can find her at Molly-Prentiss.com or on Instagram @MollyPrentiss.