An Interview with Matthew Salesses

Matthew Salesses is the author of I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, The Last Repatriate, and two chapbooks. He was adopted from Korea at age two, returned to Korea, married a Korean woman, and writes a column about his wife and baby for The Good Men Project. He also serves as the Project’s Fiction Editor.
Photo Credit Stephanie Mitchell

When Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days,” she could have been talking about the writer Matthew Salesses. He was adopted from Korea at age two and then, as an adult, returned to Korea, where he married a Korean woman with whom he now has a child. The questions of identity inherent in such a life are enormous, and, fittingly, Salesses has dug deeply into those mysteries in his work. He’s the author of I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, The Last Repatriate, two chapbooks, plus numerous essays that have appeared in The New York Times Motherlode blog, NPR, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Hyphen, and American Short Fiction.

In this interview, Salesses discusses his revision process, avoiding distractions that keep him from writing, and where he draws the line between fiction and nonfiction.

(For an exercise based on his story, “In My War Novel,” which uses repetition to devastating effect, click here.)

Michael Noll

I once heard Robert Stone explain the difference between a story and a novel by saying that a novel was like a baseball game and a story was like a single pitch. This story seems to fit that description. It’s a single movement. To use another metaphor, it’s almost as if the narrator has an immense lung capacity, and this is the story that he can tell before he runs out of breath. Did you conceive of this story in a rush or is that sense of a single, seamless movement the result of a lot of revision?

Matthew Salesses

In a way, both. I wrote the first draft in a rush. Revision took years. Most of my fiction is written in this way–the rush of the first draft and the long work of shaping that draft into something that reads with that rush. For this story, that meant cutting it up several times and moving the pieces around on my floor, adding and deleting pieces, trying to get the length down and also have enough of an emotional arc.

Michael Noll

Even though the story uses a style of repetition and variation (the phrases “In my war novel” and “Before my wife left me” reoccur in various ways) it actually contains a story that’s been told many times: the demise of a marriage. The difference between all those past tellings and this one is, obviously, the telling. How do you typically approach the plot in a story? Do you outline the events/scenes? Or do you start with the voice and discover where it will take you?

Matthew Salesses

It’s a different process for me from story to story. I wish I plotted everything out beforehand every time–I think that would be easier–but I often start with much less. Here I did start with the voice, and let the anger and sadness and frustration in the voice carry the story where it wanted. Then I trimmed it down like a hedge and guided it closer to where I wanted it.

Michael Noll

Here’s a cool book trailer video for I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying.

You’ve written quite a bit about your own experience as an orphan from Korea, and this story–and others–pick up on that idea. How do you determine what goes into a nonfiction piece and what gets used in a story? Where do you draw the line between the genres–or, how do you separate them?

Matthew Salesses

Michael Noll

You’re a prolific writer. In addition to a story collection, novella, and a chapbook plus numerous nonfiction pieces, you also an editor for The Good Men Project. And, you update your blog often. How do you a) keep up with it all and b) produce so much material. You’re also a father, which means that you’re producing all of this while caring for children. How do you do it? I recently asked Roxane Gay this same question, and she attributed her enormous output to living in the middle of nowhere and insomnia. What’s your method?

Matthew Salesses

Roxane produces far more quality work than I do. I do what I can by not watching TV (except for an occasional kdrama), limiting Facebook time, relying on my wife and Twitter for the news, cutting out most sports (I can’t seem to get rid of my love for football), and not going out much. I also have taken up drinking copious amounts of coffee and only sleeping 6-7 hours a night.

July 2013

Michael Noll is the editor of Read to Write.

Tags: American Short Fiction, Flannery O'Connor, Glimmer Train, how to avoid distraction, how to write a short story, Hyphen, I'm Not Saying I'm Just Saying, In My War Novel, Matthew Salesses, Motherlode Blog, New York Times, repetition in a story, Roxane Gay, story revision, The Rumpus, war novel