During our Friday Indie Q&A, author and playwright, Michele Merens talks with us about the weight of our words in poetry and fiction, and how fiction can be a safe unravelling for inner turmoil. Read Michele’s poignant words.
Sparrow Brutes
Indie: Congratulations on your 2nd place win in our 2nd Annual Microfiction Contest! Flunge is micro-tight, and frightening piece! How did you come up with the idea for this microfiction story?
Michele: Flunge was originally inspired by an odd piece of ephemera I read written in the early 1900s, calling for the extermination of the “noxious” harasser of other birds, the English Sparrow. I found myself a bit stunned that sparrows I had always seen as benign could be such brutes.
I guess I became a bit fascinated with the shadow side of these tiny creatures. Retooling the English sparrow as a drab city wren for a magical realism piece, I imagined this creature as fiercely carnivorous and craving a chance to tear up a protein-rich eyeball it discovered on a city street.
Weight of Words
Indie: That’s really fascinating! What did you learn about yourself and the craft of microfiction while writing Flunge?
Michele: I think of micro-fiction as similar in form to poetry, in that every word chosen must carry its own weight and purpose. I find tight word limits also challenge me to seek out precise vocabulary—I love rattling through hardback dictionaries and thesauruses, and it becomes a game of sorts to find contextual ‘best fits’ for every sentence.
Flammable Tweaks
Indie: How do you stay consistent creating art?
Michele: I often revisit and revise my scribblings months, even years, after their initial drafting. Given my turtling pace, I have come to be patient with myself.
I also tend not to throw away anything I write, which makes for a highly flammable home but also the ever-simmering possibility of future tweaks.
Fiction – Safe Unravelling
Indie: In your bio you discuss your published book Inside Our Days, was published by Muriel Press in 2020. Tell us a little about this book and can you talk a little more about the creative process with this book?
Michele: Inside Our Days reflects my interest in the overlaps that exist between mental and physical illness.
The novel begins with news that Bree Durning’s ovarian cancer has returned, the diagnosis terminal. But this is not in fact, a cancer story as much as it is a slow reveal of Bree’s previously undetected PTSD.
Mental illness often unwraps with no trackable chronology for others, but with definite inner logic for the person in its grip. I do try to extensively research my topics; however, I feel that fiction allows for safe unravelling of inner turmoil so long as respect is consistently offered up for individuals facing similar battles in real life.
Let Voices Roam
Indie: Please share with readers some sage advice about being a creative.
Michele: I would urge you to be patient with yourself and freely experiment with different forms of writing to identify your strengths. I once ‘retired’ from writing after years of submitting manuscripts with no bites. Six months later, I nonetheless found myself inspired by a quirky factoid in a PBS documentary and decided to try my hand at playwriting. I rationalized a full-length drama was about 90 pages long, which meant I could cut out nearly 2/3rds of the pages required for a novel.
“I wrote my first play on no more than that illusion, yet after submitting it to a handful of theatres, I received my first real requests ‘to see more’ and a semi-finalist contest mention. You never know what voices you have simmering within until you let them roam.”
Michele Merens
Michele Merens – I am a writer and playwright living in Milwaukee. My novel, Inside Our Days, was published by Muriel Press in 2020. I am a Barnard College Senior Scholar in Creative Writing and member of the Dramatist’s Guild.
