This year’s Novel Excerpt Contest second place winner, chosen by our guest judge, Nick Fuller Googins, is Cecilia Beard’s “Timeline of Events in Lieu of a Lobotomy.” Check out the excerpt here and then check out the interview below in which Cecilia discusses the writers she’s influenced by, how she follows the voice of a character, and not taking the easy way out.
This premise of this story is strange and beguiling, and yet you handle it with such authority that it’s completely believable. Was it challenging to find that authority?
Lydia’s voice made it possible, and I’ve tried to follow it as much as I can. I tend to start projects with a voice in mind, some little quip the character has. It appears later in the novel now, but Lydia’s voice started with her thoughts about sky swallowing: “I usually visit them after I think about swallowing the sky. Think about it. Really! All that, nestled inside you.” I remember texting that to a friend before this project took off, and he said, “Write this down. There’s something here.”
One of the things I love most about this excerpt is Lydia’s intense feelings about her women—she both admires and resents, trusts and fears, them. It would have been easy to portray Lydia as unhinged by jealousy, but there’s a tenderness to Lydia that makes it hard not to like her. What was her character development like? Did she initially lean one way or the other and, through drafts, you found this balance?
Her character has changed in reaction to Ruth, Jane, and Miss Spanelli’s evolution. Originally, I had the women speak as a unified entity, and Lydia was more of a passive observer as they commandeered her life. But as I workshopped the initial drafts of these chapters, each woman took on her own voice and backstory; I then better understood Lydia and the complicated feelings she has toward her women. I mean, they’ve been with her for over a decade at this point. Feelings are bound to change. Jane, for example, is someone that Lydia fell in love with, and I wanted that residual tenderness to be felt as Lydia sits with her jealousy and, at points, anger.
For me, envy and jealousy were the easy out. I knew that for people to want to read about a woman with constant voices in her head, things needed to go deeper. The women needed to be people in their own right with their own whims and desires.
This story reminds me of something George Saunders would write. Was he one of your influences? Who else would you consider this story in conversation with?
That’s really kind, so thank you. I was actually thinking about Catherine Lacey’s work as I wrote. She uses her novels as thought experiments and swings big with her philosophical interests, and I like thinking of my novel in that regard. How do we create personhood? Who in our life shapes our identity the most? If I say I’m one thing, and you say I’m another, who is right? Lacey, in my mind, is a pillar of psychological literary fiction, and that’s what I’m aiming toward.
What’s your writing process like? Do you have a regular routine? Or do you write when time permits?
I’m not a daily writer, but I typically write at least four days a week, hunched into my couch or at the library. I like waking up early and just hammering away for an hour, but more realistically, I find time after work.
Back in January, I started taking an eight-month-long novel workshop with Ted Thompson, who is a phenomenal teacher if you have the chance to work with him, and we’re expected to write 2,000 words a week, and I’ve been pretty good about that so far. I’m starting an MFA in Fiction at Brooklyn College in the fall, so I wanted to make sure my writing practice was in good shape before starting school.
This is an excerpt, and I’m dying to know: What’s the status of the rest of the book? Do you have a finished draft that you’re shopping around?
I’m about 60,000 words into the novel currently, and I’m realizing I have more work to do before it’s a finished draft. I’ve always had the final scene in my head, and I keep moving toward it, but I diverge and surprise myself in the process. I don’t want things to be too overly determined.
Interviewed by Jen Dupree