Fiction Spotlight: Interview with Abby Feden & Robert Warf
Abby Feden & Robert Warf, authors of our February fiction selection, “Whiteout,” discuss the creative challenges, unexpected discoveries, and the rewarding process of co-writing their haunting and evocative story.
Can you talk a little bit about where your idea from this story originated? What sparked the idea? Or is it something that you had been thinking about for a while?
Abby: Rob and I have collaborated before, and for our previous piece, I was tasked with creating the first lines—setting the tone, expectations for the situation, outlining the space. This time around, I was responding to a situation Rob created. And it was quite a situation. In both collaborations we were very preoccupied with looking; questions of voyeurism, the reader seeing what they aren’t supposed to, negotiating power dynamics between who is permitted to watch/who is watched, and so on. The opening that Rob crafted centered the body firmly in consideration of looking, and for me, that meant following inherent questions of control and bodily autonomy. Questions of gaze and power really drove the writing of this piece; explorations through the narrator’s relationships, through speculation, and through the construction of the story sentence by sentence. Where does the language linger, what is it quick to dismiss, and so on.
Rob: We wrote two pieces together this summer, where each of us wrote the first paragraph/idea for the story and then the other would run with that idea and we’d bounce back and forth/paragraph to paragraph—granted the final version was more meshed. This one I started—which was this idea of a person who becomes blinded and then regains their vision in spurts through their partner’s vision. I don’t think anything sparked the idea, but at the time I was watching the “blind” date tiger scene from Michael Mann’s Manhunter over and over, while also thinking about how gaze operates when working on this. I think too it played nicely into the other piece we wrote together, “No Cars, No Impact,” which was in Forever Magazine because that story was a totally and wildly different type of energy and gaze that was very intense to write from.
Tell us about the process. How long did it take you to write the story? What was revision like? How do you approach collaborating on a story together?
Abby: One thing about Rob—Rob loves a period. I live for a comma. I really didn’t realize how intense my comma usage was until writing this piece with Rob, and now I can’t not notice it. Which is something I’m so grateful for! What I love about writing and collaborating with Rob is that his attention to sentence rhythm and sonics pushes me to return to whatever lengthy nonsense I’m working on and evaluate intentionality. And not only intentionality, but communication—how the structure of the sentence responds to that of the previous sentence, what it pulls from that sentence, what it carries forward, what it leaves behind. When Rob edits my work, my favorite note I receive from him is “take this further.” Meaning, push on an image, a sound, a narrator’s relationship to the voice of the piece. Rob sees sentences to their full potential, insists on it in his own work, and has strengthened my own ability to spot an undercooked line. Also, my ability to stop and listen, and importantly, my comfort with cutting. When you come across a gutting sentence fragment in this story, there’s a good chance it’s a line Rob wrote. When you come across a sentence that never ends, there’s a good chance it’s a line I wrote. But also, maybe not. Collaborating with Rob’s tone, line work, and the weight of his lines was an excellent way to turn to my own stylistic inclinations and rethink, or double down. Writing this piece was a wild process that involved negotiation, not compromise; we each took turns writing our sections alone, and then came together to painstakingly question our lines. This process involved taking a long look at personal proclivities and style, both of mine and of Rob’s, and I really, really value that. In the process of working with a writer like Rob, I was offered the chance to turn to myself and ask why I like to write the way I write, and to identify where I can “take further” my process.
Rob: Abby loves commas, run ons, more commas, and I didn’t. Seriously though, her sonic work through all of these clauses and the way her sentences almost weave into one other through their length and sound create a ton of tension and make for beautiful moments on the line. And being able to actually write a story with her made me appreciate how hard that is and also gave me a greater appreciation for that style of sentence. Working with Abby though was one of the most satisfying creative processes I’ve been involved in. In part because she’s super talented and I was a fan of her writing before we collaborated, but also because our actual writing processes are quite opposite which became apparent as we worked together. For example, Abby’s narratives/plots are composed way clearer and cleaner than mine. But during the writing of these stories, I realized that while plot wise I’m all over the place, I rely on outlining beforehand. Whereas when we wrote the story Abby started, she didn’t outline anything and I would ask her what do you see happening in few scenes and where are we working towards, and she’d say something akin to we’ll learn as we write it—which is what we did. We talked out a bunch of these characters and situations and that was way different for me but also helped me learn about my own process by forcing me to do something outside my comfort zone. The actual writing of both stories happened simultaneously, and we did both in a day or two over email and text. We met up at a wine bar for the windiest paper edit session ever, which was often interrupted by something flying away and one of us scrambling after. That editing session was also intense because we both worked for hours non-stop handwrite revising sentences and we both have very different sentence styles, so it was intense having to negotiate the way you write in context of the way this other person writes and also why x style decision is needed beyond it being how you write. It’s almost like learning how to write on the fly and seeing patterns you never noticed in your own work because they now stand out as yours in relation to something collaborative. Also, it was fun to go to a piece of writing on my own after and find myself using a winding sentence construction that before working with Abby I would have never utilized myself. I think part of that is the fun of working in such close contact with a distinctive voice like Abby’s. So again, it was a super fun and super eye-opening experience. Very windy though—but great happy hour.
What do you do when you feel stuck in your writing? How do you work through blocks?
Abby: I really struggle with getting back into stories that I’ve shut away. It’s a stuckness that comes from acknowledging—ok, I don’t want to trash this, this is working, but I genuinely don’t know how to step back into this particular voice, this particular sentence work, this particular momentum. Working collaboratively with Rob was helpful in thinking about how to approach this, in that I used to assume writing creatively was an exercise in “matching.” However, when writing with Rob, we did not work solely to match one another. Rob didn’t want me to write like Rob, and I didn’t want Rob to write like me, because that would defeat the whole collaborative point. Instead, we worked to respond to one another’s gestures, patterns, rhythms, and when we needed to suture, we sutured. That was highly generative, as it was an opportunity to look at our story and its needs. I’d look at a sentence that I wrote, one that was sticking out, and instead of asking how can I get this to sound more like Rob, I’d ask, how is this sentence responding to the expectations Rob has set for the story? And that would lead to pushing into the sentence, or pulling a sound forward, or reworking the lines around the sentence, all of which often created new patterns to pick at. I’ve been trying to do this with old work I’m revisiting. Not worrying about matching, but instead, leaning into what comes out of blending the difference in writing styles.
Rob: Ironically, we started writing both stories because we were in a “writer’s block.” I know for myself at the time, I could not finish a story for the life of me and I was on like eight months without finishing something. Why this worked, at least for my block, was that it was so different to write with someone, especially someone who you really respect their craft and skill coming into collaborating, like Abby, and you find yourself not wanting to let them down or their vision for a story down. That really forced me to not only put something down on the page, but it also forced me to write at a level we could both feel told the stories we wanted to tell. Additionally, I find having a song to write a story to helps me envision the story better, which also helps to re-enter a story when I’m stuck or have been away from it for a while. Simple answer though: Force yourself to do something uncomfortable with your writing when you’re stuck.
If you could give writers one piece of encouragement or advice, what would it be?
Abby: A great writing community changes everything. Find your writer friends and don’t let go.
Rob: Find honest readers who aren’t afraid to tell you like it is.
Any favorite craft-related books, story collections, or novels you’d love to share?
Abby: Christine Schutt’s craft talk on the opening paragraph (Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 2017) is very important to me. Venita Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California is a book I’m still thinking about, as is Janelle Bassett’s collection Thanks for This Riot.
Rob: Nathan Dragon’s The Champ is Here, Babak Lakghomi’s South, Anna Kavan’s Ice. Kirsty Gunn’s Rain, Kevin Maloney’s Horse Girl Fever, Russell Persson’s The Way of Florida, and Rudy Wilson’s short story “Cake.”
