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I Don't Think Fake People Living In A Fake House In A Fake Suburb Are Any Less Dismissible Or Believable Than A Fake Psychic Attending A Fake School In A Fake Town. Nothing's Inherently Believable About Any Kind Of Fiction, Because All Of It's Untrue.

-Heidi Julavits

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I Don't Think Fake

Heidi Julavits

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I Don't Think Fake People Living In A Fake House In A Fake Suburb Are Any Less Dismissible Or Believable Than A Fake Psychic Attending A Fake School In A Fake Town. Nothing's Inherently Believable About Any Kind Of Fiction, Because All Of It's Untrue.

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I Obviously Read And Adore Traditional Fiction. I Teach Traditional Fiction; I Also Teach All Kinds Of Not-so-traditional Fiction.

As Such, Anything Is Always Possible, Even If Your Protagonist Is A Plumber. But It's The Possibility, The Limitless Possibilities, Of Any Fake Life, That Make Writing About It So Challenging.

I Think There’s A Lot Of Threshold Weeping. Like, Am I Doing This? Am I Really Wearing This Out In The World? My Daughter Is Very Much Like That. She Will Put Clothes On And Her Clothes Just Make Her Beside Herself. They Make Her So Sad Sometimes. And You Do Realize You Feel Betrayed Sometimes By Your Own Clothing. You Put Something On That Usually Protects You And Makes You Ok, And Sometimes You’re Just Not Fit For The World And Even Your Best Pants Can’t Overcome That Feeling For You.

Every Once In A While When I Get A Migraine, I Like To Think, "who Hates Me Today?"

No Matter What You Wear, Not Everyone Is Going To Understand What You're Saying.

When You Are Expending Much Energy On Someone Else's Demise, It's Like You Weaken Your Psychic Immune System.

I Think Female-female Relationships Interest Me So Much More Because They're So Encoded. There Is Kind Of A Psychic Element That Happens Within Groups Of Women. Whenever I Hang Out With My Female Friends, I Feel Like Context Is Never Needed.

I Don't Think Fake People Living In A Fake House In A Fake Suburb Are Any Less Dismissible Or Believable Than A Fake Psychic Attending A Fake School In A Fake Town. Nothing's Inherently Believable About Any Kind Of Fiction, Because All Of It's Untrue.

When My Husband First Read A Draft, He Said, "you Spend Too Much Time Describing The Characters' Outfits." He Was Right. I Removed Much Of The Clothes Talk, But Quite A Bit Remained.

The Twisty Nature Of Psychic Attack - Are You Being Attacked, Or Did You Bring This Attack On Yourself? - Speaks To Me Of An American Cultural Paradox We All Grapple With. There's The Rampant Litigiousness Of Our Society, And The Desire To Blame Others For Our Misfortunes.

You Know You're Screwed When A Western Doctor Recommends Acupuncture.

I Surround Myself With Women Who Inspire Me To Be More Ambitious, And Who Constantly Astonish Me With Their Magnetism, Style, And Smarts.

As A Writer, You Want To Go Somewhere Else Sometimes. You Want To Vary The Terrain That You're Exploring.

There Are Some Writers Who Are Done When They Finish A Draft Because They've Thought It Through Beforehand. Whereas I'll Finish A First Draft And I'm Nowhere Near Done.

I Developed A Crazy Face Rash After I Got Engaged To A Guy I Must Have Known Somewhere I Should Not Marry. I Hadn't Articulated This To Myself, So My Face Told The World Instead.

Home Is The Place Where, When You Go There, They Have To Take You In. In Other Words: Home Has Exceedingly Low Standards.

If You Agree With An Outside Person's Interpretation Of You, That's A Happy Bit Of Affirmation. It Means You're Communicating Externally What You Believe To Be True Internally. If You Disagree, It Helps Clarify How You Understand Yourself. And Maybe Makes You Productively Question How To Improve Your Communication Skills.

It's Fascinating To Imagine Two Successful Writers In One House. But When You Think About It, It Isn't Very Unusual. In Fact, So Many Writers Have Writer Spouses.

I Go Through Life Now Reminding Myself To Remember Something, And I Do This While That Something Is Happening. I'll Be Experiencing A Moment And I'll Say To Myself, "remember This!" Otherwise My Whole Life Just Blurs By.

Remember Something

If I Can Just Stop Being So Stressed Out, Maybe My Cancer Will Get Better! This Is Far Less Scary Than Treating A Disease Of Unknown Etiology.

I Tell Myself It's A Virtue, My Failure To Sleep In My Own House, Or At All. I Tell Myself That I Spend More Hours Than Most People Aware That I Am Alive, And That Over A Lifetime This Adds Up To More Living, More Aliveness. I Am More Alive Than The Rest Of My Family. Which Is My Greatest Night Fear. Which Is Why I Hunt. I Don't Ever Want To Be More Alive Than They Are.

My Husband Is Always Accusing Me Of Being A Context-free Individual. He Asks Something And He Has No Idea Where It Came From Or What It Related To. I Have To Supply Him With Way More Supplementary Information Than I Ever Have To Supply My Female Friends.

Whether I'm Writing About Plumbers Or Psychics Or Psychic Plumbers, I Want To Find A Creative Space That Imprisons Me Usefully, So I Can Deviate With Purpose.

If I'd Done The Discovery Before I Wrote The Book, Then There Would Be Nothing To Discover. It Would Feel Dutiful Instead Of Exciting.

I Obviously Read And Adore Traditional Fiction. I Teach Traditional Fiction, I Also Teach All Kind Of Not-so-traditional Fiction. And Since I'm Such A Plot Buff, And I'm Really Such A Narrative Buff, I Can't Seem To Relinquish My - Not Just Reliance - But Excitement About Those Traditional Techniques.

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I Really Did For A Few Weeks Think, I'm In Pain Because The World Needs Me To Save It. Which Is So Ridiculous And Egotistical.

Sometimes It Can Be Useful To Read Your Bad Reviews.

I Needed To Understand This Random Bad Bit Of Luck As Part Of A Bigger Design. Otherwise I Was Suffering Meaninglessly. This Made The Suffering A Lot Worse.

I Wish Somebody Knew Whether Or Not I'm Jewish.

I've Subsequently Become Conscious Of Making Memories. Which Makes Me Sound Like A Scrapbooker.

Making Memories

Whenever I Hang Out With My Female Friends, I Feel Like Context Is Never Needed. They Can Just Say Two Words About Something, It's Like Hearing The First Two Notes Of A Song And You Can Always Identify The Song. They Can Just Say A Word And I Know Exactly What They're Talking About.

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We're Not Saints, Any Of Us. Maybe Somebody Is, But I Don't Know Those People. But We All Know People Who Behave Very Smugly And Are Very Egotistical And Put You Down As A Manner Of Improving Their Own Place In The World Or Improving Their Own Place In The World.

I've Always Said That You Were Too Smart To Have A Profession. Smart People Are Hopeless In The Face Of Anything Actual. They Are Terrible Cooks. They Cannot Dress Themselves. They Are Children Who Need Guidance And Protecting.

I Calmed Myself By Walking Into My Nearby Bookstore And Marveling At All The Books Other People Had Written. So Many People Had Finished And Published Novels; It Couldn’t Be So Hard, Right?

I Always Think It's Useful To Get An Outside Opinion.

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When I Was Writing My First Draft, And Feeling Grandiose, I E-mailed An Artist/clothing Designer I Know And Suggested We Collaborate On A Fashion Line Inspired By The Outfits My Characters Wore. I Regret That We Never Did That.

Like Semmering Academy, The Grove School Was A Gothic Pile Of Bricks Run By 1950s-era Chalk Drones, Which Maintained Its Cultural Viability By Perpetuating A Weirdly Seductive Anxiety Throughout Its Community. Mary Herself Was A Victim Of The Seduction; Despite The Trying And Repetitive Emotional Requirements Of Her Job, She Remained Eternally Fascinated By The Wicker-thin Girls And Their Wicker-thin Mothers, All Of Them Favoring Dark Wool Skirts And Macintoshes And Unreadably Far-away Expressions; If She Squinted, They Could Have Emerged Intact From Any Of The Last Seven Decades.

We're Taught To Find The Antecedents To Our Adult Failures In Childhood Traumas, And So We Spend Our Lives Looking Bacwards And Pointing Fingers, Rather Than Bucking Up And Forging Ahead. But What If Your Childhood Was All A Big Misunderstanding? An Elaborate Ruse? What Does That Say About Failure? Better Yet, What Does That Say About Potential?

Our Cover Has Always Been Really Important. For Those Of You Who Haven’t Seen Itcharles Burns, Who Is A Graphic Artist, Does Four Portraits, So It’s Split Into Quadrants And There’s Four Heads, Basically—portraits Of People. We’ve Actually Often Thought And Freaked Out, What If Something Happened To Charles Burns? Because He’s So Identified With The Cover Of Our Magazine, I Don’t Know What We Would Do If Anything Happened To Charles Burns.

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Live In The Moment

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I Wont Deny That I Have A Far More Productive Writing Life Without The Internet, Mostly Because I Rekindle My Ability To Concentrate On One Thing For A Period Of Longer Than Three Minutes. My Curiosity Is Channeled Inward Rather Than Internet-ward.

I Can't Even Tell You What Else I Imagined. I Can Only Humiliate Myself To Such A Degree; At A Certain Point It Becomes Humorous, And This Story Is Not Meant To Be Humorous. This Story Is Meant To Winch Your Ribs Open And Tamper With Your Heart. This Story Is Meant To Make You Realize That Your Chances Of Happiness In This World Are Terribly Slim If You Lack A Fine Imagination.

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