R.L. Maizes on Changing Drafts and Selves

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

In this episode, Mitzi talks to R.L. Maizes about her new novel, A Complete Fiction.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin: You had 18 months when this book hadn’t sold yet to look at it again even though you thought it was finished and you added a new satirical element by changing Twitter to something called Crave. I think we change as people. I think every time you go sit down; you’re a little bit different. Even if you’re writing every day, you’re affected by the weather, the news, something you learn, and we’re always changing. And I’m wondering, it seems like, in a way, that 18 months benefited you.

R.L. Maizes: Yeah, it did benefit me. And I hadn’t thought about this until right this moment, but I started this during Covid. So, I started it in 2020, and I spent Covid writing it. And of course, I felt, in a way, very happy to have a purpose and a purpose that I could fulfill in my house during that time, which was such a disruptive time for people. But by time, now that I think about it, then you add 18 months and we’re going out into the world again, sure. I don’t know if I would have seen it. I almost can’t imagine that it would have occurred to me to make that change, which was a big change, and also maybe, you know, we got tired during Covid. And I honestly do think that at the end of the two years, when this was finished for the first time, and I gave it to my agent, initially, I think I was tired. And some of that was probably just the writing for two years, but some of it was probably Covid, whereas then even if the thought had occurred to me, which it hadn’t, but if it had, maybe the thought of rewriting this whole manuscript I would have been to tired for. Whereas when I took it back after 18 months, I wasn’t tired at all, and quite the opposite, I was so excited, and I couldn’t wait, and I thought, what a wonderful opportunity to improve something. And to be completely honest, I was so happy it hadn’t sold initially, even though, during the 18 months, every one of those rejections killed me, every one. I suffered with every one. But now looking back I’m so glad the best version of this book is in the world.

***

R.L. Maizes is the author of A Complete Fiction. Her debut novel, Other People’s Pets, won the 2021 Colorado Book Award in Fiction and was a Library Journal Best Debut of Summer/Fall 2020. She also is the author of the short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper. Her short stories have aired on National Public Radio and can be found in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and in The Best Small Fictions 2020. Maizes’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O Magazine, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and have aired on NPR.