CR 011: Mary Jones on the Many Ways We Say Goodbye
The acclaimed author discusses her debut collection of short stories, “The Goodbye Process.”
Mary Jones’s writing has been published in numerous literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, Brevity, and many others. Her essay “The Suicide Disease” was cited as notable in The Best American Essays, and her short story “When You Get There” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Now, 28 of her stories are available in The Goodbye Process, a beautifully written collection of fiction centered around the ways we say goodbye—goodbye to friends, to a simpler childhood, to a dying parent, to a dying spouse, to a phase in life, to secrets, to youth, to young love, to one’s own life. It is at times humorous, at times devastating, but stunning and wholly original throughout. (Library Journal gave it a starred review, calling it a “must-have” collection.”)
Jones shares that although she did not plan to write a collection of stories on goodbyes, she did leave the project with a new appreciation for letting go. “It’s a collection about loss,” she says, “but the flip side of that is it’s a collection about resilience, because it’s people getting through things and surviving things. I came away with a more optimistic view about resilience. One of the things I [realized] after writing this book is, wow, we really do go through a lot. [Laughs] And we somehow keep going, even though sometimes it’s things we never imagined we could get through. Also, we’re not alone—everybody’s going through these things. I find that comforting.”
Jones chatted with me over Zoom about her love for detail, her writing process, and how she handles writer’s block.
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SANDRA EBEJER: Where did the idea for this collection of short stories come from?
MARY JONES: Well, I didn’t set out to write a book about loss. I wrote about half of the stories when I realized that they all shared this theme, and I knew it was something I wanted to explore more deeply. I think a lot of times when people think about loss, what comes to mind is the death of a loved one, but there are so many other kinds of loss that we experience as we go through life. This book is an exploration of all those other things—loss of relationships, loss of youth, loss of health. I think sometimes people don’t feel entitled to grieve those things, but anytime we lose something that’s significant to us, we experience grief. So the book is an exploration of all those different things that come up.
Some of these stories have been published elsewhere in the past. Did they change significantly from the original version to what ended up in the book?
For the most part, not really. Some of them did change somewhat; some of them not at all. I don’t think there were any drastic revisions. It was just tweaking a beginning or tweaking an ending. The bigger edits with the book came with deciding which stories would be included, which stories would go, and story order.
There are a few characters who appear in more than one story. Was that intentional, or were there certain characters that you found difficult to let go of?
Yes, those characters stayed with me, and they kept coming back to me for a while. I did think of writing a whole collection with those characters, but ultimately, I felt like I explored their story and their situation enough with the stories that are in there.
The thing that struck me about these stories is how focused they are on the little details. As a writer, do you find that you’re more drawn to these seemingly mundane moments?
Yeah. I’m more interested in everyday situations and what happens in everyday life more than extreme sensational situations. I do think I’m drawn to that kind of writing, both as a writer and as a reader.
How much do you draw from your own life when writing stories?
A lot of the settings are upstate New York. That is where I was born and raised, and I think that place has stuck with me. It’s just what comes up when I sit down to write. For some reason that place feels very distinct to me. How much of my own life? I think there’s really a range in the collection. There’s one piece in the collection that’s 100% autobiographical and was actually published as an essay and then there are some stories that have absolutely no connection to my life except maybe an emotional truth.
There’s a saying that I really like from Lorrie Moore, which is, “The proper relationship between a writer and his or her life is the same as the relationship between a cook and his cupboard. What the cook makes from the cupboard is not the same thing as what’s in the cupboard.” I think that’s how my life comes into play. There are little ingredients from my life that are true in there, but how they blend together and what they add up to is not true. It’s not autobiographical; it’s fiction.
I’d like to switch gears and talk about you as a writer. I noticed that you don’t have a very active social media presence. Your Instagram page has just a few posts. How are you feeling about that side of the publishing business and the need to self-promote?
It’s weird for me. It’s not my strong point. Before I sold the book, I didn’t have any social media accounts. When I got an agent, I got on Twitter. And when I sold the book, I got on Instagram. It’s hard for a writer, I think. I’m not somebody who wants to put myself out there. I’m more of a private person. So it’s a little bit of a struggle, but I’m working with it. [Laughs]
What is your writing process like? Do you write every day? Do you plot out your stories? How do you form your work?
When I’m writing, I write every day. I have accepted that I’m not a writer that is always going to be writing. I have periods where it’s just quiet time and I’m processing life. I need time periods where I’m not writing. But when I’m writing, yes, I write every day. I try to wake up early and I have an office that’s outside, so I get outside and get writing before I check email or interact with anybody. I try to write when I’m still in sort of a dreamy, unconscious state. I think that really helps me concentrate and get into a deeper place.
I don’t plot. I usually have an idea in my head of what a story is going to be or what I’m writing, but a lot of times the story deviates from that and goes in its own direction. I like when that happens. It’s exciting for me and I feel like my best fiction comes when the story surprises me. There’s a saying I like: “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” I like when a story surprises me and I’m like, “Oh, whoa. I had no idea the story was going here!” I think that’s my best work. When I try to stick too close to a plan, it doesn’t work as well for me.
How long does it take, typically, to feel as though a story is complete?
It varies. I mean, I have had situations where stories come to me fully formed and they’re beautiful. By that I mean, they don’t need many edits or revisions. So I’ll have very quick story writing sometimes. For the most part, though, it takes a longer time. Maybe I go through 20 or 30 drafts of a story. For one of the longer stories, if I sat down to write it and didn’t have any problems—I just wrote it and revised and went through that whole process—I would say that’s probably like a two- or three-month process. But a lot of times they don’t come as easy, and there might be a five-year break between when I start it and when I finish it. And it doesn’t mean I’m sitting there working on that one story the whole time. Sometimes I have to go live a life and have other experiences before I can finish a certain story. So it really varies. I’m all over the place with my timeline.
You’ve been writing professionally for many years. Did you grow up knowing you wanted to be an author?
I wanted to be a writer when I was a child. I was always writing little stories about dogs and cats and stuff. And I think I had a writer’s sensibility from a young age. I was concerned with big life and death-type things. As a little kid, I was thinking in a different way. But then I went to college, and I felt like I needed to do something more practical. It just never occurred to me to pursue writing as a career. I come from a working-class background, and I think I had a more practical idea of what I should be doing in college. Nobody really valued creative pursuits. So I majored in psychology, and I felt pretty good on that path. Then, by a happy accident, I ended up in a fiction writing workshop. I went to Syracuse University and Syracuse has a really rich literary tradition. I think some of the best short story writers of all time have taught there, like Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff and now George Saunders, so I think something was in the air there. I ended up in this fiction writing workshop, which was life changing for me. It was where I discovered the short story form. I fell in love with a lot of writers that I still read and study and teach now, and it put my life on a different course. After I took that I switched it to be a double major in English. Then I moved to Boston and worked in publishing. I was always writing and working on stories, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I moved to L.A. and got a master’s degree in fiction writing. Since then, I’ve been really focused on it.
Who are some of your influences?
I would say Raymond Carver is a very big and important influence of mine. His work explores the life of working-class people and everyday struggles, and that was really eye opening for me. At that time, I had never seen those kinds of people in literature, so it was a revelation. It let me know that I could write stories and reveal human nature through these everyday things. That was exciting for me. Later on, I discovered Amy Hempel, who I really love. I ended up going to Bennington to work with her. Amy is a master of minimalism. There’s not a word wasted in any of her stories, and I just love that and respond to that. Her work is really insightful, and it has meant a lot to me. Those are probably my two big influences. But then other influences that have been important to me—you probably would see their influence less in my work—[are] writers who I consider risk takers, like Aimee Bender or Joy Williams or Miranda July. People who are writing things that are maybe a little bit stranger than my work. It opens up possibilities and lets me see the sky’s the limit with stories. You can do anything.
Do you ever face writer’s block? And how do you break through that?
I do face writer’s block. Like I said, I try to be forgiving and kind to myself and understand that I’m not a writer that’s going to write every day in my life. My mind needs breaks, whether it’s two months or a year. Sometimes I’ll have a big break where I’m not writing. But when I’m writing, getting out early in the morning is important when you’re still sort of in that dreamy state. I think having a routine is important, whether it’s writing 200 words a day or writing an hour a day, whatever it is. Just have some kind of routine. I think staying in the chair is important. If you’re going to write for an hour a day, do not let yourself get out of that chair for any reason. Aimee Bender famously tied herself to a chair when she was first writing with a silk scarf, just as a symbol. I always think of that because some of your biggest breakthroughs come right after you get up.
Also, for writer’s block something that helps me is if I’m really going through a period where I can’t get words on the page, I go back to the last thing I was working on that I didn’t complete and I try to complete that. I think that changes my psychological state, just getting that story completed. It’ll open me up to write the next thing. I just have to complete that last thing and then I can move on.
You teach fiction writing at UCLA Extension. What advice do you give to your students that other writers might benefit from?
There’s a poem that I like by Raymond Carver that helps me. It’s called “Sunday Night.” It starts out with the line, “Make use of the things around you.” And then he lists five different things, like the light rain outside, the cigarette in my fingers, the woman bumping drunkenly around in the kitchen. And the last line is, “Put it all in, make use.” For years, I had the words “make use” as the wallpaper on my phone. So every time I turned it on, I reminded myself to pay attention to the world around me. What am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I thinking about? I think those details are what make fiction come alive. So my advice is to make use.
To learn more about Mary Jones, visit her website.
To purchase The Goodbye Process, click here.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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