(Photo: David Backer depicted with source of writerly inspiration.)
Metazen: Go meta: tell us more about “Mollify”. Where did this story come from?
David: When I was studying for the GRE in 2007 I wrote a lot of very short stories to remember the definitions of words for the vocab section of the test. I’d pick one or two words from my Princeton Review list every morning and write the stories at work. This is one of those.
We’ve been getting very digital, and I think ancient traditions can help us keep the parts of our analog selves we might not want to give up as we become more digital. (I’ve been taking computer sabbaths on Wednesdays, for example—no computer for an entire day—and it helps.) The story itself comes from this thought.
Metazen: Imagine you’d stand next to yourself looking over your shoulder: what’d you like about what you’re doing and what not so much?
David: When I moved to South America I started reading more history and anthropology and economics. Now I see people as receptacles of material conditions and not people. I don’t like that. It makes me not fun at parties. But I understand what I see here so much better when I think those thoughts. How am I supposed to forget the material conditions when they’re staring at me in the face?
I’ve been a high school teacher for five years. I love it. But I was at the beach yesterday morning talking to a friend about her relationship with her boyfriend and I talked to her like a student. I was very didactic and command-verby. It just came out. I have to make sure to stay humble as a person even though I’m expected to be an authority at my job.
Metazen: Did you have (a) teacher(s), either dead or alive, known to you personally or not? You know, writers/editors, who walk with you?
David: Dr. Norman Nathan is blind a poet living in Arlington, VA. I worked for him as an amanuensis for two years in college. He’s 92 now, I think. He’s published over 600 poems, starting from the 1940s, in the NYT (when they published poetry) and the Saturday Evening Post and hundreds of journals. As his amanuensis I was responsible for helping him edit and submit his poems, filing Medicare statements, checking his pulse, recording the near-gibberish of his quasi-catatonic wife, and reading various texts aloud to him, like all of Ecclesiastes, Algernon Swinburne poems, or old correspondence. I did this kind of stuff for him for two years. Sometimes we just talked for hours. He taught me about literature, love, names, jokes, time, religion, organization, dust, etc.
Metazen: Context is meta: what do you listen to when you write? What do you like to look at?
David: Writing for me is composing and editing. When I compose I don’t hear anything, so it doesn’t really matter. I’m usually on the bus or in class or something so I don’t control the sound anyway. Same thing goes for sight, I think. It’s whatever’s in front of me.
I can listen to music when I edit, though. Last year a friend gave me Brian Eno’s album X/Y and I loved it for editing. Since then I’ve been listening to Sigur Rós and Rainstick Orchestra. Ambient, formless, harmony stuff. Makes the slogging more pleasant.
Metazen: What’s your view on meta fiction? Or if you don’t have any, why the hell not?
David: I think meta fiction is good, but only pragmatically. Playing with levels of awareness helps achieve a more meaningful end. Socrates’ examined life formula works for anything (fiction, education, nose-picking, whatever). What I don’t like is meta for meta’s sake. If you make something self-aware just to show me the trick of it then what the hell’s the point? In that case self-awareness devolves into selfishness. But maybe that’s not what you mean by “meta fiction.” Is it? Maybe what I just wrote is irrelevant. That would be embarrassing.
Metazen: We publish in an embarrassment-free zone, you’re safe with us. But you’re a meta-maker yourself: you edit FictionDaily - how does editing this aggregator influence you as a writer?
David: It’s making me more mature. I’m such a little kid when it comes to wanting to be a writer. I go from throwing everything on the floor and quitting one day to screaming for joy the next day (which gets to your next question). FictionDaily helps me see what’s out there. Because I read more of the published stuff than I did before I can see what people are doing. This helps me know what to do, sort of, which slowly makes me less of a child.
Metazen: How will getting published by Metazen change your world? Or if it won’t, why not?
Metazen fucking rocks.
If Metazen publishes me, then I’m associated with something that fucking rocks.
If X is associated with Y, X might share qualities Y has.
Metazen is publishing me.
Therefore,
I might fucking rock. (This is not a thought that exists frequently in my world.)
.
Metazen: We like your mathematical approach - we might ask you to do some number-crunching for us later this year…Any famous last words, words of thanks or (more) shameless self publication?
1) The best thing I’ve ever written is my first novel. Click here to read it. 2) I’d like to thank Mr. Nimock for thinking my one-page short story was the best one in our 8th grade creative writing workshop at Roger’s Park Middle School in Danbury, Connecticut in 1998. 3) Listen to podcast #3 (C. Spencer Yeh)
