J. A. Tyler on The Truth in Magical Realism

I love telling students of writing that whatever they put on the page becomes truth in the context of that world. This is to me, and I hope to them, mind-altering. Once you write it, it is fact, no matter what genre or style you prefer. What a glorious, unbelievable, crazy feat that really only exists in the realm of writing. Write the words, and it is so. 

For magical realism, a genre I work in almost exclusively, that joy becomes doubled, because what we’re making into “fact” in a work of magical realism is wholly unexpected and often counter to what we understand or know about our world, and yet, it becomes truth. In Only and Ever This, where a mother is attempting to mummify her twin sons in order to stop them from growing up, a kind of Peter Pan syndrome but from the parental perspective, I didn’t have to spend any time processing whether this type of mummification was possible. Some research on mummies is loaded into the structure of the novel, but I didn’t need anything else. Once I wrote that she was practicing mummification on a cat, it became so. And when that cat is reawakened, its heart wrapped in mud and rainwater, readers have to accept it. So the mother can mummify just a portion of one son’s arm, testing the waters of her abilities, while allowing me to focus on the emotional and moral struggle of the task rather than with any challenges presented by physiology or biology.

Also in the book, the boys’ father is a pirate, and because it is a work of magical realism, I don’t need to worry about what it means to be a pirate in a modern era, or even in the sort of stylistically 1980s vibe of my novel. He is a pirate and he sails off to sea seeking immortality, either in the form of treasure or, more significantly, in the form of a vampire. Do vampires exist? They might, because the father is searching for them, and he believes it, so we as readers have to believe in it too, at least in his world. Magical realism takes the burden away from fact and places it squarely on imagination.

The boys too, these twin sons, they fall in love with the ghost of a girl up the street. She is ethereal, rife with lightness and beauty, and they want to build a relationship with her before she disappears, before she becomes entirely see-through. In the novel, that becomes fact, just as the arcade they hang out in, the marbles they shoot, and the bikes they ride are fact. With magical realism, a muddy undead bully of a kid can haunt the town, a cat can be dissected and resurrected, and ghosts and mummies and pirates can co-exist in a township where the rain never ends. When we write it, it is so.

For writers (and readers) of magical realism, we don’t have to take the characters to another planet, to some faraway, fictional world. We can center them in our world, with its battered relationships and gray skies, with its sunlight struggling through clouds and waves bleating on the shore. We can take what we know and blend it with what we don’t. Magical realism allows us the horrific and beautiful ability to house any monster, literal and figurative, inside our own tragic world. 

J. A. Tyler is the author of Only and Ever This and The Zoo, a Going (both from Dzanc Books). His fiction has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Diagram, Black Warrior Review, Fairy Tale Review, and The Brooklyn Rail among others. He lives in Colorado. For more: www.jasonalantyler.com, twitter, instagram

L.S. Stratton on Reading Your Reviews

It’s time for a new interview series… like NOW. No really, actually it’s called NOW (Newly Omniscient Authors). This blog has been publishing since 2011, and some of the earlier posts feel too hopeful dated. To honor the relaunch of the site, I thought I’d invite some of my past guests to read and ruminate on their answers to questions from oh-so-long-ago to see what’s changed between then and now.

Today’s guest for the NOW is L.S. Stratton, author of Not So Perfect Strangers, which releases on March 28

Has how you think (and talk) about writing and publishing changed, further into your career?

I’m definitely warier of any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to writing and publishing. I’ll give a couple of examples.

“Don’t open a novel with the weather or with someone waking up.” This was drilled into me by books and blogs on writing—until I saw several bestselling novels do that very thing. 

“Self-publishing isn’t real publishing.” I had my first short story published when I was in college, which was about two decades ago. This was back when self-publishing was treated like it was subpar or not “real” publishing and authors were discouraged from doing it if they wanted to be taken seriously. Now we know that was hilariously off base. Those who were smart enough to ignore the naysayers and get into the market early were able to build platforms, huge careers, and even have an impact on trends in traditional publishing. (Fifty Shades of Grey and The Martian, anyone?)

Let’s talk about the balance between the creative versus the business side of the industry. Do you think of yourself as an artiste or are you analyzing every aspect of your story for marketability? Has that changed from your early perspective?

I have too much imposter syndrome to think of myself as an "artiste", but I try my best to take creative risks in my writing. Some authors have their formulas: plot points or characters that tend to reappear in some incarnation in their novels. I’ve done it too. When I used to write romances under another pen name, I would hit a certain number of love scenes per book. I think embracing those formulas is the business side to writing. You do it either because it worked before and/or it fulfills readers’ expectations of your work. But even though you can say with relative confidence that you’ve mastered how to make a good spaghetti or pancake, eventually you’re going to get bored with cranking out spaghetti or pancakes. You want to try something different, to challenge yourself. That’s the creative side of me. I have to give in to it occasionally, or I’d get bored with writing. 

The bloom is off the rose… what’s faded for you, this far out from debut?

Reviews. (And this is coming from someone who has written reviews and gotten a starred review before.) I understand that they’re necessary. They can help build buzz for books in some instances. But I used to see them as critical feedback I should definitely listen to. I’d try to take them very seriously, but they could be so subjective and all over the map; the same book would get a review saying the pace was too slow, and another reviewer would describe it as fast-paced. I eventually understood that this was more for fellow readers than for the authors. 

You release your book into the world, and what people do with or take from it after that point, is out of your control. I’m not saying to disregard feedback or critique. That would be foolish. I value my editors’ notes and my beta readers. But beyond that, I’ve learned not to take reviews too seriously or at least try not to take them too seriously.

Likewise, is there anything you’ve grown to love (or at least accept) that you never thought you would?

I’ve learned to accept or be at peace with my writing career and realized that sometimes, treading water rather than making big waves isn’t so bad. I never got the splashy debut and envied the writers who got that opportunity. But I have seen authors who got splashy debuts, that got the big burst on the book scene, and they kind of . . . disappeared. I don’t know why. Maybe sales with their second book didn’t match the sales of their debut so their publishers elected not to exercise their first-option clause, or they knew as writers they were “here for a good time, but not for a long time,” as they say. 

That’s why I tell debut authors that even though a huge emphasis is put on the monster-sized advance or being a bestseller or landing the big book clubs, it doesn’t mean your career is over if you don’t get that. And I’ve seen authors who were midlist for years gradually move up to bestsellers after building their readership with consistent, quality work and finally landing the right publisher that was willing to give them the marketing and PR budget to help them excel. Being an author is challenging enough; don’t put additional pressure on yourself.

And lastly, what did getting published mean for you and how was it changed (or not changed!) your life?

When I first got published, I’ll be honest . . . I took the whole experience for granted. I was 19 and a short story I wrote in two weeks and submitted to a writing contest on a whim, landed me my first book contract and put my work on store shelves nationally. I then took a break from writing to finish my degree and start working in journalism and I assumed it would be just as easy to get back into fiction writing and get another work published. Wrong! So wrong! I got rejected so many times, I can’t even count. The feedback was brutal. But that humbling experience made me appreciate it even more when I finally got another book published. I have respect for the writing process and my job as an author that I didn’t have two decades ago. This isn't a hobby that I can just pick up and put down; it’s a craft I’ve decided to dedicate my life toward.

L.S. Stratton is a NAACP Image Award-nominated author and former crime newspaper reporter who has written more than a dozen books under different pen names in just about every genre from thrillers to romance to historical fiction. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband, their daughter, and their tuxedo cat.