(July
1, 2008) PCM's Ashley had the
opportunity to talk to Aryn Kyle, author of The
God of Animals, her debut novel. The God of Animals
is a wonderful coming-of-age tale about 12-year-old Alice
Winston, who lives in Desert Valley, Colo. with her agoraphobic
mother and her father, who struggles to keep their ranch
above ground. The New York Times bestseller is based on
Kyle's short story, Foaling Season, a recipient of the National
Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication in The
Atlantic Monthly. Aryn Kyle was kind enough to provide
some insight into the novel, her writing process and some
of her favorite authors in the interview below, a must-read
for aspiring writers and fans of The God of Animals.
AK: This is Aryn. Hi.
A: This is Ashley from Pop Culture Madness. How are
you doing?
AK: Good, how are you?
D: I'm good, thanks. I wanted to ask you a few questions
about your book, The God of Animals, and your writing process.
To start off, could you just tell me how you got started
writing?
AK: I always wanted to be a writer, even when I was a really
little kid. That was what I said I was going to be when
I grew up, and I wrote stories and poems when I was a kid.
I guess I didn't really start doing real writing until I
got into graduate school. I went straight from my undergrad
to an MFA program.
While I was in the MFA program, I wrote the short story
that ended up being the first chapter of my novel, [The
God of Animals], and it was picked up for publication in
The Atlantic Monthly, and then it won a National
Magazine Award. Then I got a few other stories published,
so it happened pretty quickly after that.
A: That's pretty amazing for a first short story. (When
I was reading The God of Animals, I could not believe it
was Aryn's first novel. It is really a beautifully-written
book and reads like it was written by a very experienced
author!)
AK: I know. Everybody I know was like, "I can't believe
it!" It was the first time I'd ever submitted a short
story, and I didn't even really know what the Atlantic Monthly
was. But a girl who was in my [MFA] program had a story
published there, so I thought, "Oh, well, I'll send
it; I'll send it there." And like four weeks later
I got it and I thought, "Wow, this is going to be a
total piece of cake!" Of course, the second story was
harder to sell than the first. (laughs)
A: Yeah, I think the idea about getting stories published
is that it takes you hundreds of tries.
AK: Right. Yeah, and after that - I didn't have an agent
for a couple of years after graduate school, so I was still
submitting all my stories myself. And I did get hundreds
of rejection letters. That was a great process, though,
and I wouldn't trade it. A lot of my friends got agents
very quickly, so they never went through the experience
of submitting their own work, and I really enjoyed it. I
mean, I'm glad to be done with that phase, but I learned
a lot sending them myself.
A: So, how did you actually make the transition from
short stories to novels?
AK: Well, I was working on a novel when graduate school
ended because that seems, you know, like what you're supposed
to do. You work on stories in graduate school with the idea,
always, that you're going to write a novel. I was working
on a novel in graduate school and it kind of fell apart.
Then graduate school ended and I started to work on another
novel that was just so overly ambitious for where I was
as a writer. It took place in Victorian England and spanned
a hundred years and required all this research.
AD: Wow. (That sounds like it would be a really hard
first novel!)
AK: I ended up moving back to my hometown of Grand Junction,
Colorado, just because I was kind of out of options and
out of money and didn't know what to do. That was the town
that I had set that short story in - a sort of fictionalized
version of that town. Being back in the town I started to
think about the characters again and what happened to them
the day after the story ended. It seemed like a story I
really could tell; the writer that I was at that moment
could tell that story. It was a much simpler story, it was
straightforward and it was in one point of view. Once I
started to work on that, it was only about 18 months from
start to finish. So for me, I think it was finding the right
story for me to tell that made it possible to transition
from story to novel.
A: Uh-huh. So, can you explain some of those similarities
and differences between writing short stories and novels?
AK: Well, I think with stories, I give myself a lot more
freedom to try different things. With stories I feel like
if I really blow it or make a wrong turn, it's a couple
of weeks that I've wasted and 20 pages. In working on the
novel, I was much more nervous because it was like, "Oh,
if I take a wrong turn or if I'm working on something that
isn't going to work, that's three years of my life."
So for me, I think working on stories is a little more fun.
But the novel gives you so much more space for character
development, so much more time to really spend with the
characters, to be in their heads. I feel so much closer
to the characters in the novel than any characters I've
written in stories, just because I've spent so much time
with them. I think when I worked on the novel, it stopped
being about what I wanted and I just became led by my characters.
That doesn't happen as often in stories; a lot of times
in stories I'm kind of structuring things and moving things,
and with the novel, ultimately I just felt like I was on
a ride by the end.
A: Yeah, wow. Can you tell us a little bit about your
writing process? Do you usually have an outline and plan
it, or do you write as you go?
AK: I don't, usually. I don't usually start with an outline
or anything like that. Even with stories. I think the first
thing I'm interested in is character, and that's why I'll
usually sit down to write, because I have a particular character
in mind. And I'll always be a little nervous because I'll
have the characters, but I won't really know what they're
going to do. Plot is sort of the last thing that comes to
me. I really have to know the character first, and sort
of what they want and what they're willing to sacrifice
to get what they want. Plot, for me, sort of comes from
knowing the answers to those two questions.
A: (I've talked to several authors and I had
always assumed they all worked with carefully-planned outlines.
But to my surprise, several of them told me that was not
the case. It is really amazing how Aryn described it; that
she becomes so engrossed in her characters, she almost lives
them, that the plot and the story develop naturally, organically).
Are the characters that you write about based on people
that you know?
A: Sometimes they start off that way, but by the end I
never think of them as like anyone but themselves. I recently
went back to Grand Junction with the book and did some readings
and talks at the library. It was very, very strange to do
that there because the people from the town recognized the
town and they thought they recognized characters. In some
cases they did recognize people who the characters were
initially based on. It was so strange and uncomfortable
to be there and answering questions, and I was like, "I'm
never going home again! It's so much easier to do this in
Minneapolis."
A: (laughs) How much of what you write is based
on your own experiences?
AK: It's so hard to answer that question because, you know
- All of it? None of it? For the most part I feel like I
as a person haven't had a ton of experiences. I've been
in school most of my life. I only wanted to be a writer,
I studied writing, I read a lot of books, went to college,
went to grad school, wrote a book, went out and toured with
the book. And I don't write about people writing. But I
think a lot of the emotional states of my characters are
more autobiographical than their experiences or their lives.
I mean, I didn't grow up on a ranch, I don't have a sister,
I was raised by my mom and my step-dad in a little house
with a couple of dogs. But I know, sort of, the adolescent
experiences of being lonely and feeling longing and wanting
to simultaneously fit in and escape. So I think that's the
part of my writing that is more truthful for myself.
A: It's actually really surprising to hear you didn't
grow up on a ranch, because I immediately assumed that based
on the book.
AK: No, I didn't.
A: How did you find out about the experiences someone
would have living on a ranch?
AK: Well, I took horseback riding lessons for a few years
when I was a kid and was really into it, spent a lot of
time out at the barn, competed in some local shows. As a
kid I really idolized that world. I just thought, "Oh,
if I could just live in a place where I could have all of
these horses and all these dogs and live out in the country."
It just seemed like a dream come true to me. And then I
kind of dropped it in high school. When I got older and
looked back I thought, "That experience was so different
for the people living it than I imagined it was." Looking
back I thought, "God, they were always struggling to
pay their bills." I think it's a hard life and I, as
a child, glorified it.
And that was the genesis of the original short story, of
the idea of what it would be like to live the reality, as
opposed to the fantasy. So I'd seen a lot of things out
at the barn, I did a fair amount of research and talked
to a lot of people. You want to be as accurate as possible,
but of course sometimes you make choices for plot rather
than authenticity. But it's very funny because the farm
that I sort of based the novel on was a small-town barn,
and the people that ran it hadn't been to college for equine
sciences - it was very much that they had learned their
methods from their parents, who had learned some from their
parents, and a lot of these things are on their way out.
A lot of people in the know would say they don't do things
the right way.
A:
Do you have a favorite part of The God of Animals or a favorite
character?
AK: It's so hard; it changes from time to time. (long
pause) I'm trying to think if there's a favorite part.
I really like the characters - there are a few characters
that surprised me, that I kind of originally included them
almost as props or devices to move one scene to the next
scene. Like Jerry, Nona's husband, is one of them, Patty
Joe was one of them, Mrs. Altman was one of them. And all
three of those characters - at different times, I was writing
and all of a sudden thought, "Ooh, you're going to
be important; you're going to be important to the book."
And then I would have to go back to the beginning and write
them back in as whole characters, rather than caricatures.
A: Mmhm. (It's really interesting hearing the differences
between her actual writing process and what I thought the
process was really like for most authors).
AK: Those were some of my favorite writing experiences,
when suddenly somebody sort of popped out and became real.
I think I have a special affinity for those characters because
they kind of insisted on being there, and it was a surprise.
A: How did you view Alice's relationship with Mr. Delmar,
her teacher?
AK: You know, that relationship started in sort of a strange
way because when I decided to go back to the story and expand
it into a novel, I was sort of like, "Okay, these are
the guidelines I have to work with; this is the world. Everything
in this novel has to come from this first chapter."
And I had a lot of ideas, but the one thing I really didn't
know what I was going to do with it was the drowning of
Polly Cain. It's such a big part of that first chapter,
and it was such a big part of the short story, which is
word for word the first chapter - it hasn't changed at all.
And I just thought, "I don't know what to do with this.
I don't know how to make this thread evolve," because
I really didn't want Alice to spend 300 pages sort of mooning
over this dead girl.
It had to go somewhere, and strangely the teacher was what
happened with that. It was just where that went. I wanted
that death to sort of push her in a new direction, to take
her to some relationship that was completely outside of
the barn. And then when it did - you know, a lot of people
read the book and say they expected something so much darker
than that relationship.
A: (I know I certainly did!)
AK: In retrospect, I can completely understand how readers
would really expect the worst of Delmar. But when I was
writing it, I never imagined it going in that direction.
I never thought of him as being dangerous in a predatory
sort of way. I wanted him to be dangerous just in the fact
that the relationship was wrong. A child shouldn't be talking
to an adult in the middle of the night, and yet he's really
the only character that Alice talks to, the only character
that she sort of reveals herself to, even though she's mostly
lying. She reveals a lot about herself to him. I just always
thought of him as being a damaged guy who was in a period
of his life where he was making some really bad decisions
and, right or wrong, that connection that Alice had to him
really helped move her from one place in her life to the
next place in her life.
A: You brought up Polly's death. When you were writing,
did you have in mind - because you never really explain
in the book how she died - did you have that in mind or
did you just want it to be sort of vague?
AK: You know, there was one point where I did think I was
going to expand a little bit more on that and give more
of an indication of how she had died, but in the end I decided
not to do that. The drowning is one of the few things that
I kind of lifted from my own childhood. When I was in eighth
grade, a girl I went to school with who I didn't know very
well drowned in a canal. I kept waiting for someone to tell
me why it had happened. I was in middle school, so everyone
gossiped about it: "Did she jump?" "Did someone
mess with her and throw her?" Nobody ever told us.
To me, so much of the book of Alice's journey was not really
about discovering answers, but figuring out how you live,
or how you make sense of the world, in the absence of answers.
So I sort of chose to just leave that open.
A: Right, right. So what do you think that Alice would
be doing now, like a year after the book ended?
AK: People ask that sometimes and I never really focused
specifically on where she was or what she was doing, but
I did really know that she was in a very different place.
Are you familiar with the writer Joy Williams?
A: No. ( I'm not really that big of a short story
reader, but Aryn has inspired me to pick some up!)
(Williams is an American fiction writer who has published
four novels, three short story collections and two non-fiction
works. One of her novels, State of Grace, was nominated
for a National Book Award for Fiction, and another, The
Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction. Her essay collection, ll Nature: Rants and
Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals, was a finalist
for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.)
AK: She's one of my very favorite writers and she has a
short story called "Escape" that sort of influenced
how I ended this book. But the story "Escape"
is about this little girl whose mother is an alcoholic.
They drive around in the mother's convertible and go to
this magic show. The whole story is about this little girl
who's sort of tied to her alcohol mother, and the very last
line of the story is something like, "I got out of
that car, but it took me years."
A: Oh, wow. (That's a really powerful last sentence!)
AK: That was sort of the ending that I wanted for that
novel: I got out, but it took awhile. So it was never terribly
important to me where, specifically, she was, just that
she got out.
A: Right. You mentioned that author; what else are you
reading now? Or what else has influenced you?
AK: I've been reading a lot of stories lately because I've
been trying to finish up a collection of my own. Joy Williams
is just one of my very favorite authors in the world. I
love Jeffrey Eugenides; Middlesex is one of my favorite
books. Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson is another one of
my favorites. Catch-22 [by Joseph Heller], which is a very
unlikely choice for me. People are always like, "Really?"
That's one of my favorites; I had to read that while I was
in high school against my will, but I ended up loving it.
A: Yeah, that always used to happen to me. (I'd just
like to thank my Contemporary American Writers professor
for assigning Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate...)
AK: Um, what else. That Night by Alice McDermott, is another
one of my favorite books. I mostly read - really character-driven
fiction is what I find myself preferring.
A: So you said you're working on a short story collection
- is that what you're doing now?
AK: Yeah, I have a lot of those stories I wrote while I
was in graduate school, and they were published while I
was in graduate school. Now I'm trying to fill out the collection
a little bit. It feels a little strange to have these things,
you know...
A: Yeah, awhile ago.
AK: Yeah, awhile ago. It's not like a novel but it just
keeps progressing. It's like, "The story represents
me at 22." (laughs) "This story represents
me at 25."
A: Do you have any ideas for another novel? (Please
say 'yes'!)
AK: I have a few, yeah. For awhile I thought, "Oh,
I just really need a break." I didn't have any desire
to jump back into anther novel; I still felt really connected
with The God of Animals. I needed some time to sort of separate,
and then you're out on tour, so you're talking about it
a lot, so it was very hard to remember where that book stopped
and I began.
I really didn't want to start another novel until I made
that break. I feel like that's the kind of passion I'm starting
to get excited about, going into novel number two, whatever
it may be.
A: Great. I'm looking forward to it. My last question
for you is, I know that you said you had always wanted to
be a writer, but what do you think you would be doing if
you weren't an author?
AK: (laughs) Oh, that's so hard because I'd tried
to get jobs and I've always been so bad at them. I have
no idea, I really have no idea.
A: When you were a little kid did you ever think that
you would be like a ballet dancer or something? (That's
what I wanted to do for a long time).
AK: Yeah, totally. I wanted to be like a princess and a
mermaid. I wanted to be a psychiatrist for like 10 minutes
when I was eight-years-old or something. And I thought I
was going to be an English teacher for a little while; when
I was in high school I thought maybe I would get my teaching
certificate. But that lasted for like 12 seconds. I really
wanted to be an actress; when I was in high school I was
in all the plays, but I'm pretty realistic with myself,
and even then I knew that I did not have the talent required
to make a career.
A: Right. Well, I definitely loved your book. Thank
you so much for talking to me about it.
AK: Oh yeah, thank you.
Visit Aryn Kyle's Official
Site, as well.
