Lei Wang’s “How to Begin a Love Story” was chosen by Charles Yu as our Prize for New Narratives 1st Place Winner. Read the winning story here and then check out this interview in which Lei talks about “science nerd camp,” online quizzes, being meta, and why we sometimes just need to “fake it ’til we make it.”
What originally sparked this story?
I was in the last week of science nerd camp for adults, a.k.a. the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, where you write a new short story every week for six weeks while also workshopping and responding to seventeen other people’s weekly short stories. (This is definitely a recipe for burnout, but as someone who needs external obligations and loves bonding through hardship, also a really amazing experience.) And my trope through the whole camp, or my character, if you will, was someone who was desperately trying to figure out what a story was. I was coming from the world of ideas-driven nonfiction and had only really written in a frenzy the two short stories to get into the workshop, one of which was just a series of hypothetical vignettes. I was asking everyone really basic questions, like: How do you write a scene? Do I need them? Do I need characters? (My first story was written from the totally lofty POV of angels philosophizing to humanity in general, and everyone told me to put in some actual humans, please.)
I called my best friend, a fiction writer, in despair the second week and she basically told me to forget what I thought I was supposed to do. “How would you write a story if you’ve never read one? If you just had something you wanted to say.” So I really leaned into my confusion about how to write stories to begin this one. I was asking everyone, “How do you get two characters in a story to even meet?” And I just tried to get them there, but I also think I skipped a bunch of steps. I’m afraid I still don’t really know how to write a traditional story at all—what is dialogue?—but someone once told me that instead of focusing on your weaknesses, you could instead just get so good at your strengths that the weaknesses don’t even matter, so I’m holding onto that as a life raft. But maybe I should write a swashbuckling action story next, to really challenge myself!
This piece begins with the always-fascinating instructive POV, suggesting that the reader is being led into their own writing, which merges with an essayistic explanation of story craft and elements, that then merges with traditional fiction techniques as we introduce Philip and his father. In essence, you’re teaching the rules of fiction while actively leading the reader through the process of story. This has such a cool effect of creating characters that feel separate from the whims of your narrator even while very pointedly building those characters right in front of us. I wish I had a better question here, but: Would you talk a little bit about holding all those disparate pieces of the story together, or perhaps how you were thinking through all those individual elements as a whole?
I wish I had something smart to say about the tension between the narrator and the character! But as I said, this story started from my own confusion, so it was kind of a fake it ‘til you make it situation. My nonfiction background definitely helped. Nonfiction often speaks about borrowing techniques from literary fiction, but I think fiction could also borrow from nonfiction a kind of movement of the mind, or a movement of ideas. I’ve often worried for good reason that my writing is ungrounded, that things can feel floaty and abstract. That can definitely be negative, but I also think there are things floating stories can do that grounded stories can’t; for one, you can go many places faster, especially in this age of shortened attention spans. That said, I took one of those What is Your Toxic Trait quizzes online, and my toxic trait was Mansplaining. I think the POV of this story is in some ways trying to Mansplain fiction to someone like myself, but then remembering, “Hey! This is a story!” but really just following more a movement of thoughts versus a movement of events: The ideas are the scaffolding.
Would you talk a little about your definition of metafiction (obviously it has a classic definition, but I love to hear how authors build the idea for themselves), and perhaps about why it felt like the right strategy for this piece in particular?
On the simplest level, of course, it’s any story about a story, or any story really self-aware it’s a story. But also isn’t it so weird that most stories in the world try to make you forget it’s actually made up? I think I especially wanted to tell a meta-story about love because it seems so much of our (my) suffering about love comes from feeling like we (I) are not living up to our ideas and expectations about love, instead of what’s actually here. But I also wanted to write a meta-story about love that was also about success, because success is one of those things that can totally be a story—a made-up idea—but the story of the lack of it can feel very viscerally real, and I wanted to question that. I often think of a line I read on a blog somewhere, “You can be a complete failure and still enjoy breakfast.” Being a failure is a story; breakfast is reality. It’s like how you can be happy in your life—enjoying it—without necessarily being happy about your life and its meaning. I may be going terribly off topic.
At the risk of being annoying, even this answer is a convenient fiction: Me making something up about “strategy” after-the-fact, and maybe even trying to seem smart (I am now meta about being meta). But truly I’m not sure why this piece turned out the way it did. In an extreme Buddhist view, all stories are basically propaganda. We’re not really sure why we do anything, but we have to justify our actions to be understandable to others. But it’s really a mystery and I do want to leave room for the mystery.
I’m that annoying guy at the reading that always wants to ask the two super-cliché questions, so apologies in advance. 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’ve often been envious of writers with rituals, especially involving sunrise, but the only thing that really works for me is figuring out what works that day. I have an advisor who says routines are overrated; you don’t want writing to feel dutiful. Then it’s dead. More than routine, I thrive on a deadline: when it feels like your whole system is pointed towards one direction, but it’s not just leisurely riding a bike but actually racing towards a finish line. (So thanks for running contests J) I actually wish I could go back to science camp for the weekly deadlines, but you’re only allowed to do it once in your whole life!
Second, beyond writing routine, what about your writing process? Are you a seventeen drafts before your first reader sees it kind of writer, or does it all flow brilliantly to fountain pen on first thought (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…?
My process seems to be: struggle struggle struggle struggle until finally I give up on trying to control the process and then thoughts or ideas and even sentences come from somewhere beyond me, which sounds very mystical, except it happens to everyone. My best writing process is when I have a crush on a writer I want to impress and wanting them to like me somehow overcomes all my other insecurities and I stay up late texting myself line after line of excellent e-mail.
Interviewed by Brandon Williams