“Life is Not a Laser Beam” — In Conversation with Margaret Smith
Interview by Katie Lynn Johnston
This week, I chatted with the brilliant writer, editor, and journalist, Margaret Smith (“Housewarming Party”) about what drew them to flash fiction, their writing process, and their personal manifesto.
Watch the full interview here or listen to it below.
Author Photo by Mike Rundle
My first question—which I feel like I ask this to everyone, but—when did you realize you wanted to become a writer? Why are you a writer?
I feel like it’s also maybe not a very good answer because I sort of defaulted to it. I’ve always loved English and writing and coming up with little universes. I think a lot of writers are just really creative kids and then that kind of spirals into the career. But in high school I was so set on being a business major. I was going to go to a state school, I was going to study business. And then I was in this career program sort of thing, where the end goal was to create your own business, and so I did it and I learned that I hated it. I hated business and everything in it. Pitching and networking in that realm I didn’t like, and so I thought, “Okay, I’ll just fall back on what I know,” which is English and writing. Then I found Columbia College Chicago and it just kind of fell into place, a little bit of a serendipity kind of a thing. So I think my love for writing just always came through. It was always there, whether I knew it or not.
Jumping off of that, why flash fiction?
It’s just so digestible, I think, and accessible for me, especially. When I first found out that it was even a genre, that was so huge for me because I think the way my brain works I can’t always sink my teeth into a big novel or something like that. I think, in my opinion, some of the most profound writing is done in flash fiction because, within two pages you can get an entire arch of human emotion and I think that that’s really splendid. So when it comes to my own writing: I think it’s for my own attention span, being able to get all my thoughts condensed into something, but I think that offering the reader something that is, like I said, so digestible and a bit accessible—I think not everyone, and again this is from my own biased perspective, wants to sink into a huge novel. I think that I like being able to sort of clip through these different little stories, and I don’t know. It works for me I think. It works for my attention span and I think I’m quick to move on from project to project so I think I’m able to complete something fully before moving on with flash.
Yeah, I totally get that. And it seems like flash and you is sort of like a match made in heaven.
I think so, yeah. I didn’t even know it existed until a few years into my undergrad, and then once it came to me it was like, “Holy cow, this is it—this is what I needed all along.” It’s like poetry, but less daunting I think. Because I’m not a poet—so it’s like a hybrid I guess.
I get that. Poetry can be very daunting because of all the forms—there are so many rules.
There are rules. And I feel like the history surrounding poetry, more than any other genre, is so massive—there’s just such stake in the history of it. Yeah, exactly, daunting and I don’t want to do anyone wrong I guess, even though it’s my own work and maybe it’s not that serious, but . . . (LAUGHS)
(LAUGHS) Well, jumping off of that again, do you have any flash writers that you look up to? Or flash pieces that you find a lot of inspiration from?
I think the one author that I always go back to—she’s the first one that I ever read flash from—is Desiree Cooper. With Pattie McNair, at Columbia, not only did we read her book, but she had her come into the classroom and that was—I mean, that was huge for me. I always think of her and her book, Know the Mother. It’s just such an excellent [book]. It traverses, in my opinion, all of the most important human emotions. It was fascinating because she came into our classroom to talk, and she started talking about how this was her first book—and she’s later in her adulthood—and it was just fascinating the way that she talked about flash fiction. It was something that she was able to work out within herself and then work into this anthology that she made. I think that she’s always a big one for me, just because something that’s important for me is nostalgia, family—those are big themes for me, and that was something that she was really hitting on the nose. And, again, opened my eyes a lot to the world of flash, which was cool.
What inspired “Housewarming Party?”
It’s so weird—I think I can confidently say that almost all of my pieces start with me just finding words that I think sound nice and then stringing them together, putting them on a document, and then I kind of just get a general feeling. I don’t really know. It’s nothing scientific—which I guess the opposite of writing is science (LAUGHS). But I just remember putting down words that I thought sounded nice and then I started thinking like “growing the universe,” you know? I’ve also realized that all of the work that I write is somewhat dark. I never considered myself a “dark” writer or those things, but themes like the grotesque and the macabre, those things really do interest me. So usually, like I said, I find things that sound nice and then I attache it to some sort of theme, right? Whether that’s murder, or mystery, or whatever it is. But it was interesting because the story began like this huge universe I started building and then I slowly had to shrink it back down. This was right at the deadline of when the story was due to be submitted, and I started shrinking this universe and it was really weird because I had gotten to this point where I was like, “I can’t do [this]. It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t be as big as I’m making it.” I don’t know. It didn’t seem right I guess. I think I lost my train of thought a little bit. (LAUGHS)
What you were saying about starting a piece because of words I found really interesting, because [from what I know] I don’t think a lot of writers do that, and that’s how I start writing pieces, too. “This word sounds nice next to this word so I guess this is what I’m going to write.”
(LAUGHS) Right! A big thing for me is nostalgia, memories from my past—which is super weird to equate to the really dark stories that I write because I had a great upbringing, but this home that I used to be baby-sat in had a giant grandfather clock, right? So I started thinking about that, and I thought, “Okay, what are adjectives that are synonymous with a grandfather clock?” I started writing that down and then the pangs and the booms, the things like that. Again, it’s so not scientific, but it just sounds nice. Repetition to me sounds nice. I was also brought up in the Catholic Church—and prayers, hymns that are repeated, I think that always hit me really strong. So I think I always try to use those same modes to draw out that emotion because I know it brings out that emotion in me—or it used to anyway. I don’t know, it’s a good train of thought. It’s a good thing to follow, I guess, and so far it’s worked out.
I would say it definitely has. My next question—this is one I remember being asked in a creative writing class once and I was like, “I have no idea how to answer this,” and so I think about it all the time—is how would you describe your own writing? Who are you as a writer?
My god, I’ve never been asked that question. That’s a great question. That’s a big one. (LAUGHS) Who am I as a writer? It certainly has changed. When I realized I didn’t want to go into business and I wanted to go into writing, I was like, “I don’t want to be Stephen King, I just want to write.” And then I got to Columbia and I was like, (LAUGHS) “No, I’m going to be the next Stephen King.” And now I’m like, “No, [I’m not].” Not only is that unrealistic, but I don’t want to be that person. What I always tell myself is that if I write something and somebody reads it and just one person has some sort of emotional connection or a second of an emotional response due to my writing, that’s success for me. I don’t need thousands of eyes on it. I just need one good pair of eyes that really enjoyed it. So I don’t know. Besides creative writing, I do a little bit of journalism and I do editing and stuff like that, so I think if there’s any reader out there who sees my byline or my name on the jacket of a book or whatever it is—as long as they’re reading it and they’re not upset by it and they’re enjoying it, that’s what matters to me. I don’t want to call myself a small-time writer because I’m not even sure if I’m that, to be honest—I just think I enjoy my own little niche. I think that whether someone sees it or not, I wrote it and I put it out there, I felt emotional writing it (LAUGHS), and as long as there’s someone else who can reciprocate that, I’m good. I don’t know if that answers your question fully, but that’s how I feel about writing, anyway.
That’s a great answer.
(LAUGHS) Thank you!
The second part to that question—we already talked about themes that you find yourself going back to—but are there images or colors or maybe even specific words you notice [that resurface when] looking back on your work?
Yeah, I know that there are words—I can’t think of any off the top of my head—sort of dramatic words, you know, not the word “juxtapose,” but something like that, somewhat fancy. I find myself, when I write it down, [thinking,] “Okay, I used that either within the same story or just a story ago.” I think I recycle my vocabulary a lot, because it gives it that same general feeling that I’m always chasing after, some kind of mysterious, vague kind of feeling—which is another downfall because I feel like “vague” writing isn’t always good writing, so I have to strike that balance. But I am just a sucker for nature and nostalgia. People have always told me about the imagery in my work, and I think I owe a lot of that to just being observational. I’ve spent so much time either outdoors or being the person that sits in a room and looks around and observes the room. I think some of that has sort of helped me. Being able to equate different images to things or certain sounds, like the panging, stuff like that. I think memories are big for me. This is going to sound very dark, but if I ever lost my memories, I think that that would be very hard because it really is the driving force behind almost everything that I write. Like in “Housewarming Party,” whether that is just a grandfather clock that devolves into this huge story or whether it’s just a tiny little snippet that I skew into something else. So, yeah, I think those are the biggest things for me. With colors, green, black is a big one, red is a big one. To me, those colors represent drama, I guess—I don’t consider myself a dramatic person, but I think what I write is, which is weird. Again, I’m not always sure what person I am—how I get to what is on the page, I’m not sure. I don’t think I fully understand the connection between myself as a person and myself as a writer, because I think those are two different people. But it’s there. It’s gotta be there, obviously. You can’t turn into a different human being.
This is another big question. Since you had this beginning love of writing and English, but chose a different study at first, what would you say to your past self? Is there something you wish you had heard?
A couple things. One of my favorite quotes of all time—and I don’t know if this man said it, he probably heard it from someone else, but the man who ran the career program that I was in for business, he’s wonderful and recently passed from cancer, but he said, “Life is not a laser beam.” And I love that quote, because it’s so true. When I was in high school, even beginning of college, I was like, “Okay, this, this, and this. I’m going to get published and I’m going to do this. This is how my life’s going to be.” Of course, it’s nothing like that. Which is good. I like to come back to that thought. And the other one—besides “life is not a laser beam”—I guess, honestly, just not take myself so seriously. I thought that every single thing, even in my workshops that no one else besides my professor was going to read, defined me as a writer wholly. That was my portfolio, that was everything—and that’s really not true. You can pick and choose what you decide to show to people, how you present yourself. I mean, obviously, don’t act like an asshole to people. But, I mean, when it came to my own work, I didn’t have to be so rigid I think. And so, when I started finding things like hybrid work and flash fiction, is when I started realizing that it’s really not all that serious as [I thought]. What’s serious is what you present to people and how you present it. So I think a younger Margaret needed to take a chill pill and just needed to realize that there is both time to figure things out, space to figure things out, and that people are a lot more forgiving than you think they’re going to be. So it’s okay to fail. It is certainly okay to fail. I’ve learned that time and again.
That’s so wonderful. Such good advice. Do you have a favorite piece you’ve written or that you’re currently working on?
That’s tough. A few come to mind, but one that I always go back to—I painted this picture, it’s not good, I’m not a painter, I’m not a physical artist, right? But I painted this picture years ago, and it sort of started representing the United States, and I started making almost like a manifesto about this painting—just about the different ways that we’ve sort of bastardized America and the way the government affects people, stuff like that. I think I’ve been working on it since I was 18, and I think I’ll be working on it ‘til the day I die. I don’t know if it’ll see the light of day—it might—but I always think about it because it’s almost like a journal. Where I can put all these raw, unabashed feelings into this thing—I can sort of just pour into it. I think it’s also a place I can go back to steal sentences from [to] weave into other pieces I’ve written. So it’s almost like a fountain of stream of consciousness. I think that’s another big thing for me in my writing. I think a lot of times people might say that it’s lyrical or whatever, but it’s just kind of falling out of my brain and I think sometimes it sounds nice—lucky enough, that it sounds nice.
The manifesto thing, I find that so interesting because I was just about to ask you—you’re a political person [so] how do you think that comes into your art?
For a while I was the Opinions Editor at the Columbia Chronicle on campus, so I really do love to write about politics and study politics. I’m certainly not as versed as other people so it’s not like I’m not an expert, but it’s something that really drives me emotionally. It gets me fired up in a lot of ways so I think I’m able to channel it into things like my journalism and even my physical art. I try to keep it away—well, I shouldn’t say that; I don’t try to keep it away from my creative writing, because every external factor informs how you’re going to write, whatever it is. I would not say, [however], that my creative writing is inherently political in any sort of way, besides this manifesto that I’ve spoken of. But I think that, for me, I have to be able to divvy up where my passions are. I have to find that my passion for nostalgia and my passion for storytelling, they have to be on my creative side. Whereas when I get fired up about politics and all those things, government and all that kind of stuff, I feel like I have to find a more tangible or more immediate medium to present that to. Again, whether that’s me writing my angry feelings down on a Word doc and never sending it anywhere, or whether it’s published, I think that’s how it is. Certainly those to things have to inform each other. You can’t do one without the other.
That’s very true. My final question is what are you working on now? Is there anything exciting that you want to get out there?
Unfortunately I don’t have anything immediately happening. I do a lot of freelance work, so I don’t have my name attached to a specific masthead, but I do a lot of journalism freelance, so it’s not like it’s necessarily things people want to read. The most recent thing that I’ve done is [that] working for this medical university up in North Chicago, writing about COVID cases in Illinois, writing about working on using artificial intelligence to figure out an Alzheimer's cure. Some stuff is even over my head so I don’t want to signal boost that to your readers, but that’s the kind of stuff I’ve been doing. I think what I want to say is whether it’s on the masthead of a magazine or the shell of a book, if you can remember my name, you might see it one day. Again I’m not Stephen King—I’m not saying you’re going to see me on the New York Times Best Sellers, but you might see [my name] randomly and think, “Oh, I read that interview one day.” Maybe. We’ll see. (LAUGHS) But, again, life isn’t a laser beam so I sort of just take what comes to me. Younger Margaret would’ve been like, “What do you mean you take what comes to you? That sounds insane,” but I think I’m lucky enough to just be in a place where whatever comes my way happens. So I don’t wanna be that person that’s like, “Be on the look out for me, I’m coming!” But maybe you’ll see me. (LAUGHS) Hopefully.
Margaret Smith is a freelance writer and editor based out of Chicago. Their work ranges from the socio-political to the eerie and uncanny—and, sometimes, the moments when those aspects of life coincide.