Sasha Fletcher on Finding Structure Everywhere

Welcome to I’m a Writer But, where two writers-and talk to other writers-and about their work, their lives, their other work, the stuff that takes up any free time they have, all the stuff they’re not able to get to, and the ways in which any of us get anything done. Plus: book recommendations, bad jokes, okay jokes, despair, joy, and anything else we’ve got going on that week. Hosted by Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley.

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Today we talk with Sasha Fletcher (Be Here To Love Me at the End of the World) about finding inspiration in the structure of other forms of art, staying surprised as a writer, writing a novel that is actually a poem, writing the books he wants to read, and more!

From the episode:

Structure is a thing that exists in all media and all forms of art, and the easiest thing to do, I think, is just take the structures that will fit best. Any time I’m writing, I come up against all these situations where I’m not equipped to convey all the ideas that I’m trying to convey, so what exists out there that has done something like this that I can look at to get a better idea of how to structure it?

I feel that we can get this from movies, from paintings, from anything. You look at how any structural problem is approached by an artist, and you can see how they did it and you can see what lessons you can take from that in terms of craft. I feel like this book pretty clearly rips off Speedboat [by Renata Adler]. If I hadn’t read Speedboat, I don’t know that I would have ever figured out how to write this.

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Sasha Fletcher is the author of the poetry collection it is going to be a good year, several chapbooks of poetry, and a novella. His work can be found both online and in print.