Melanie Simonich’s “Hurmë” was chosen by The Masters Review‘s editorial staff as one of two winners for our 2024 Featured Flash Contest. Make sure you read this meticulously crafted sudden fiction piece, and then continue on below for our interview with the winner!
What sparked this story or led you to write this piece?
This piece was inspired by events in my life but, if I’m really honest, what led to my actually writing it was pure panic at a workshop with a writer and teacher I admire. With a laugh, they said something like, “Let the gentle pressure of my expectation compel you,” and that expectation was enough to make me finally figure out how to put these images down. Sometimes I need a deadline.
One major technical choice that jumps out in reading this piece is your section breaks, straightforward and effective—each paragraph is an individual set-off section, which serves the purpose to this reader (along with the beautiful imagery, of course) of making each paragraph feel almost like its own prose poem within the larger work. How did you come to that strategy, and was that always the intention or did it evolve at some point into this structure?
I had been playing with these images in an essay for a while and was struggling to make them interact in the way or with the force I desired. When that instructor gave the class the prompt to tell a story through two seemingly unrelated objects, I took it as permission to go back to that longer piece and pull out the sections with munitions and the ones with persimmons. I wrote some new prose and cut away other prose in the process. Which is all to say, it became more about how these individual sections interacted on the page versus how they literally connected on the page. And the white space seemed to leave room for that interaction. I think clearly delineating the sections serves as a sense of pacing, as well. I tend to be very verbose in early drafts and the crafting of this one was all about reduction. And thank you, reading poetry is how I found my way to writing. Rhythm is a huge part of how I get started and if something doesn’t carry that in isolated moments then I know it won’t interact on the whole in a way that matters to me.
Persimmons are used so incredibly effectively in here, both thematically and visually. I mostly want to point that out for writers, the powerful flexibility a totemic item can achieve and how deeply it can enrich a story. I don’t really have a question formed around them, but if there’s something about persimmons or their role in the story you want to talk about, I’d love to hear it. If not, well, I love what you did with them.
Ha, thank you! I agree regarding the power of a totemic item. In the writing I most admire and aspire to, so often the emotional resonance exists in the images rather than the overt telling. Interrogating an object or totem seems to be one path to that resonance. When it comes to the persimmon specifically—I’m sure this happens to many writers and it happens to me often—it was an image I couldn’t let go of, one that got stuck in my head. I didn’t fully understand why until I started writing. A longtime mentor always says, “Trust the metaphor.” And so that has been a large part of all my writing—running towards an image whose meaning I don’t entirely understand yet hoping it will become clear if I just keep going. The persimmon was that kind of image, an object I kept coming back to, one that I knew mattered if I just followed it onto the page… I still have never eaten one though, texturally they kind of freak me out.
I’m that annoying guy at the reading that always wants to ask the super-cliché questions, so apologies in advance for these next two. First, can you tell us a bit about your writing routine? (mornings with coffee pecking at the keys; ten hours in front of a keyboard every day; chunks when inspiration strikes, et cetera?)
I love that guy at readings! I wish I could tell you I have a steadfast routine where I sit down every morning before sunrise and write until noon. I do not. Maybe one day. I tend to write in binges, especially around deadlines that involve someone else’s eyes. I am starting to let the gentle pressure of my own expectation compel me to finish things, though. And that seems like a win. I make notes about images that stick with me during a day or a conversation I have/overhear and come back to those when I’m trying to begin something. Sometimes just placing those images side-by-side gives me a way into a draft. And coffee.
And the story process itself: are you a seventeen drafts before even your first reader sees it kind of writer, or does it all flow brilliantly to fountain pen on first thought without stopping (someone someday will reply yes to that, I’m sure), or do you write a single sentence a million times until it’s perfect, or…?
Yes, the fountain pen thing.
Just kidding. I do tend to write all my first drafts by hand, though never brilliantly flowing or in fountain pen (is this where I put the ad for Pilot’s Precise V7?) There’s something bodily about writing that the keyboard seems to dull if I draft on the computer first. Like our hands know something about where to go next. Yep, I heard how that sounds and I stand by it. And I’m definitely a recovering perfectionist. That tendency keeps me from sharing my work more than actually doing the work, but I’ve been known to rewrite a sentence a time or ten million.
If this question is too personal or simply not something you’d like to focus on for any reason whatsoever, please do feel free to ignore it, but: would you talk a little bit about your overall submission process for this piece? I’m always curious about the journey a piece has taken to publication.
I rarely submit my work (see perfectionist tendency above) though I’m trying to change that these days. And this piece was a length that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. So, when I came across the flash contest I thought it might be an opportunity for it to find a home. Thank you for giving it one.
Interviewed by Brandon Williams