What Should a Writer Do?
Talking with Gabriella Burnham about Revision, Community, and the Role of the Writer
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-August, Gabriella Burnham and I met at Ollie’s, a small ice cream shop in Bushwick where neither of us had been before. Like every day in August, the weather was damningly humid. The fire hydrants were jetting into the streets and every dog’s tongue was glummed on the ground. I’d never been happier to have pores.
I raced out of the subway and walked how I normally did when I was late--and I am often late--my strides stretching every inch of my legs, veering mindfully between strangers. One of the strangers I passed, I would soon learn, was Gabriella, whom I swerved around a block away from Ollie’s. I settled on a bench in front of the store. She waved to me from across the street and patiently crossed.
I’ve always admired patience--I’m a rushed person, a habit I can’t seem to break--both in people and in literature. Burnham’s debut novel, It is Wood, It is Stone, is a tense and haunting portrait of a woman living in Brazil with her new husband, an acclaimed academic. It is a story of desire and self-sabotage and resilience. More than anything, though, it is patient--in how it unveils its characters’ unspoken desires, their defining betrayals, their hypocritical attachments, the risks they’re willing to take to build meaningful lives for themselves. Burnham writes masterfully about infatuation and doubt, and how the latter, in a relationship, might spur the former to bloom.
Burnham and I have a fair share in common. We share an agent, we share the honor of releasing debut novels during the pandemic, and we share a love of mint ice cream, which we both ordered—though she added a cup to her order, a safety precaution I hubristically spurned. Over the course of an hour, we talked about her experience writing outside of the traditional publishing world, working in immigration law, and the role of the writer in making the world a better place.
Alex McElroy: How did you start working on this book? How did you get into writing? Marya [Spence, our shared literary agent] told me a little bit about it. So I wanted to hear from your end, what was your story? What led you into the writing world?
Gabriella Burnham: Well, like most writers, from a very young age, I gravitated towards writing as a way of expressing myself. When I was really young, I must have been like six years old, I asked my mom for a typewriter. I barely knew how to write, but I would try to create stories on the typewriter, banging away. But I never actually thought that I would be an author. It seemed like a profession that was really far away from what I could achieve. I didn't know any authors growing up, I didn't know anyone who wrote professionally. My mom was a chef who worked in kitchens. So it was incredible when I got a job as a reporter at my local newspaper in the summers during college. That was my first experience working as a writer. And then I graduated from college in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis.
AM: Great time to graduate.
GB: Yeah, it was tough. I didn’t want to move back home to Nantucket, where I grew up, so my first job out of college was working as a hostess at this decrepit seafood restaurant on the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut.
But I kept writing on the side and then eventually I got a job working at an immigration law firm. Again, I was writing on the side all the time. But not publishing anything, just writing for myself. I moved to New York in 2012 and started an MFA program in 2013, still with a full time career working at a law firm. I didn't actually quit my job until about six months before my book came out, because I still didn't believe I could write full-time. And that was both a financial thing and also, I kept asking myself, what does it actually mean to be a writer? How would I fill my days, what does that even look like? And I'm still figuring that out. I'm figuring out the money, and I'm figuring out what my days look like.
AM: That's really fascinating thinking about models. I have a couple questions about that. You said you've got your MFA on the side. What was your writing community like? Were you working on the book on your own? Are you someone who shows no one until it's ready? I feel like I'm the exact opposite. Like, I'm always talking to other writers, other friends who I trust about my ideas, thinking through things with them. What was it like to you to for you to be outside what we think of as the writing community as you were working on this book?
GB: I met other writers at my MFA program, and that's probably one of the greatest things that getting an MFA gave me. The program I went to, The Writer’s Foundry, was very new when I joined -- I was part of the first class to ever graduate from there. I found out about it because Justin Torres was teaching there at the time, and I loved We the Animals. I applied on a whim--which was not a super official process, I think I sent them a writing sample. But they contacted me and told me that classes started the following week if I wanted to join for the fall semester. I was in a cubicle in Midtown Manhattan, wondering, should I do this? It was such a risk, but it felt like the right move for me-- to dedicate more time to writing in a serious way. So I emailed my boss, and I was like, I'm going to have to start leaving at 6pm three days a week. Is that okay? And so for two years, I was working full time and then going to school at night, and it was the greatest thing I ever did. I mean, I was also in my mid 20s. It was a lot easier to not sleep as much.
AM: There're so many more hours in your 20s.
GB: And I was still going out every weekend and also exercising in the mornings somehow.
But it was a really nascent MFA program. So it wasn't the type of program that was going to get me connected into the professional writing world. It was much more about honing my craft and figuring out my voice as a writer, and then also meeting other writers. Some of my friends—especially one of my closest friends—I met at this MFA program. We were a ragtag group of people at different stages of writing--a lot of very politically engaged people. One student was seventy years old, and he was doing it because he loves to write and had been a mechanic his whole life. That was my writing community and still is my community in a lot of ways, even though I'm meeting more published writers now.
AM: That touches on the question of models, which hearing you talk about it, it seems so similar to something I was struck with in your book, the narrator talking about having a life in relationship with [her husband] Dennis? He has a life where he knows everything he wants to do, whereas she is trying to get to the next thing, doesn't really know what her next step is. I love that as a metaphor for people who aren't reared in the academic world? Can you talk a little bit about—I'm not trying to accuse you of auto-fiction. But I want to talk about what it has been like for you to learn to write without clear models? And how have you created a vision for yourself of what it means to be a writer? What does it look like, for you, without those models, and how do you think you've benefited? Maybe because you haven't had models?
GB: I've been a reader my whole life. So in some ways, my idea of modeling what writing is, or what a writer is, was through writers and books I admire. What kind of book do I want mine to be, in the footsteps of writers whom I love? When I look at writers like Anne Carson, or Maggie Nelson, or Clarice Lispector, or Gabriel García Márquez, writers who, when I read them, I was like, This has completely broken open and disintegrated any idea of what I think a book should be. I wanted to try to do that with It Is Wood, It Is Stone--play with form and language in new ways--which is a really tall order. I think that if I had the specter of the publishing industry over my shoulder, I wouldn't have had that ambition.
As I was writing [my novel], I truly did not intend to publish it. I was not thinking about that at all. I was just trying to push myself and how I use language. I was experimenting. And so I think in that sense, it was, you know, it was a benefit that I wasn't in the publishing space while I was writing this book, so that I could be freer to try new things. I think the hard part is now that I have published it, I'm learning that I'm in the business of writing. It's not just my passion project on the side. It's how I'm earning money now. And also there's a very wide audience that's reading my book and I'm having to navigate the different voices that come to the book. It's something that I have to learn. It's a part of the business now.
AM: [Editor's Note: very cute dog trotted past]. You were in immigration law. What has it been like moving from something that was public in a different sense, working in the legal field, whereas you were not public. And now to move into a space that seems almost inverted, where you're becoming very public. How have you continued to find balance in your life?
GB: I was just talking to a friend the other day about how, being a writer—and I don't know if you feel this way—being an author is such a strange profession, because it's full of contradictions. On the one hand, people think that if you’re an author, you're this mythical figure. Suddenly you become an icon. Writing and publishing a novel seems like one of the most impossible things to do. And it is-- it’s an incredibly difficult thing to achieve. But on the other hand, it's also perceived as being frivolous. Like, writing a book is this insignificant way to spend your time. And so it's both of these things, in the eyes of society. It’s a monumental accomplishment: Who is going to write the next great novel? And yet, It's also something that a lot of people think they can do without much practice or experience. Or without having something to say about the world. So there are these constant contradictions of what it means to be an author. It both has this kind of iconic status, but at the same time it often isn't taken seriously as a craft.
And moving from a profession where—not to say that immigration law is this noble profession, because, I mean, working within law is very complicated, morally speaking. But I think that there was a part of me where I could tell myself, You know, I have this nine-to-five job and I'm helping people immigrate to the United States and I'm learning about this part of our country that is highly relevant, politically speaking. So to move from that to spending my days writing can be really difficult. But at the same time, on a personal level, it's what makes me happiest, and I also believe that the act of writing-- of spending your time imagining, and daydreaming, and creating--is a political act in a hyper-capitalist society. I can say that honestly as someone who was squeezed for every minute of my time, working at a law firm. So when I remember that, I am so much happier doing this than anything that I was doing before. That brings me back to my writing. And I'm starting to realize that my contribution to the world actually is writing. It's not clocking in at a law firm day in and day out, you know, drafting immigration petitions.
AM: I have a couple thoughts about that.
GB: I want to hear them.
AM: Something I've been thinking when I'm in my most cynical is, The role of the artist in society is to volunteer with their local mutual aid organization. There's a lot of conversation around the role of the author. And I think you've been in the activism sphere, and you are now in the literary world. How has being around an activist world shaped your understanding of the power of literature?
This goes back to what you were saying about authors as both deities and regular people. Because if we didn't think they were deities, we wouldn't pursue this career. And then we obtain this career and realize, Oh, I'm still me. I'm not the person I thought Márquez was. He was just him. And he's not the person Borges was. That's a lot of questions mixed together. But what do you think of the relationship between like activism and art production? And how have you delineated these two worlds for yourself? Or where do you see them intersecting?
GB: It's a really good question. It's one I think about every day. I should first say that, if my sister heard me say that I was an activist—and she's like a true tenant organizer who organized in the South Bronx and in the Southside of Chicago—she would be like, "Okay, Gabi, sit down." I always thought of myself as a little bit on the periphery of people who are doing these great things and I am lucky enough to associate myself with them. But I always considered myself a writer no matter what.
A lot of people really want to be involved right now in political work that many very skilled people have been doing as jobs and careers for their whole lives-- like my sister, for instance. We're in this moment where everyone is asking themselves this question: “How am I going to contribute to society in a more meaningful and important way?” And I think, unfortunately, the answer is personal. I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who are now like, “I’m an activist” or “I’m an organizer” because they’ve been doing volunteer work for a few months and getting more involved in mutual aid groups. Which in some ways is so great. We’re being radicalized out of complacency. But just like it takes dedication and skill to write a novel, it also takes dedication and skill to organize communities. The way that we're all going to individually contribute to something greater has to do with our personal skills and commitment. My personal contribution is writing. My skill set is not in organizing. I don’t have a lot of experience doing that work and there are a lot of people who do and are very skilled at it. And I think when I can, if those who have built a life as activists and organizers need more hands, I'll do whatever they tell me to do. But writing is why I'm on this earth. I can't force something else to be true. I’ve devoted my life to being a great writer, even when it wasn’t how I made money. And I’m going to make sure that my writing has the same ethos and mission as those who have committed their lives to organizing and movement-driven work.
AM: I should pull back. My point is not that every writer must work at a mutual aid. I really resonate with you saying that the artist is not an activist; in most instances, they are not. And that was the point behind my thinking. I'm curious about finding your contribution without feeling this desire to name what it is? Like, how can I just like, do the thing. Writing is what I do and what I contribute, as you said, it makes me happy, and I love it. And I both think it is the most powerful thing in the world and the most useless. Both of those things are profound to me. I don't know if writing a book can change the world, which I think is a conversation that gets brought up all the time. But on some deep level, I've committed my life to this thing. So I probably do believe writing can change things.
GB: I think writers have a duty to write something that reflects our material conditions and our sociological and psychological conditions. I deeply believe that and I'm frankly not interested in writing that doesn't do that. The books I gravitate towards are ones that reflect back the most important questions in our world. And that might not be directly useful on a day-to-day basis like organizing work, but we need books to ask questions about humanity. Why humans make the decisions that we do. You brought up the ‘use’ of books. It's an interesting question, because I think a Marxist application is becoming more and more relevant, and Marxists contemplate the use value of things, and where that ‘usefulness’ fits in the material conditions of our world. And so the question is, where do books fall in all that? Gramsci might argue that books are a tool against cultural hegemony. But really, the point is, books are going to outlast all of us. Both of our books are going to be here far longer than we are. So the question is: What do our books say about this moment in time?
That is really important. I think it's a bit unfair that art in general is not taken seriously in this hyper-productive world. And I think it is deliberate. It's deliberate. The literature that really turned me on to writing—not first, but definitely in my early 20s—was Russian literature. What really turned me on to it is that I could see that they were laundering information under the currents of the page, because they were so heavily censored, and they were being told to write propaganda for the oligarchy. So they were giving us messages underneath the text that were accurate reflections of humanity. And I think it's so important. The direct action work makes a difference on the day to day, and books tell people 100 years from now what was actually happening.
AM: I really love that and I think that that gives a really broad perspective on what it means to capture truth. The most important part of that for me is that it's an artist's job to continue to look at something, to continue to observe and figure out what is happening, to try to capture and represent it in some way. And whether that's working through the maze of censorship or through parable, through allegory, through satire or anything like that or when you're directly able to say it.
Less theoretically, can you talk a little bit about the process of releasing your novel? It was published during the pandemic. What has that process been like for you? How has it been to find your readers that way?
GB: Well, on some level, it was kind of nice, because I was so anxious about my book coming out. It was the first big thing I've ever published, and I had no idea what to expect. So having it come out during the pandemic, when I was fully cocooned, not leaving my apartment, it was strange, because it felt like this thing that happened outside of me. But I could control how I was feeling in my apartment. Doing virtual events, same thing, like I shut the computer, had a martini, was on my couch afterwards. I could relax.
But I went to a friend's reading recently, Sanaë Lemoine, who wrote The Margot Affair. She had a reading at Fort Greene Park. After her reading, this young woman approached her clutching her book, and was like, “I came all the way from Manhattan because I love your book so much and I wanted to see you read.” And she asked Sanaë to sign it. And I was like, Oh my god, this is what we've been missing. Those serendipitous moments that happen after readings or doing in-person events where you can have a physical connection with someone. I can't wait to have that with the next book. Writing is such a solitary process. Being able to finally connect with people is a true joy.
You seem to really thrive in the virtual space—I don't want to make assumptions—but you know how to work social media in a certain way. And I am not a person like that. I have moments where I get it. And then there are other moments where I'm like, I don't get this, it's horrible. I want to delete all of this from my phone.
AM: I always feel horrible. So that's just my advice. But yeah it's hard to stay in the digital space, right? I talked to a friend the other day about this. He's a friend I met online. And he was like, “You seem a lot like yourself in person as you do online.” I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. There isn't a major divide between who I am online or off. Maybe I'm just a weirdo in person.
GB: I need to practice more because I feel like I'll post something and it doesn't sound like me. And it's not intentional that it doesn't sound like me. I haven't figured out how to kind of be myself in that space. And then I get really insecure when I see someone who's so good at it. And I'm like, How did you figure out how to emanate this personality in this space? I haven't figured it out yet.
AM: That's what the second book is for: figuring out online personas. Can you talk a little bit about your process for the second book? Maybe talk about the revision process that you're using now? And how is it different from working on your first book?
GB: I don't know if you felt this way writing your first book, but--I don't mean to say I was just throwing pasta at a wall to see what sticks. But I had to figure out while writing what the structure was going to be and what I wanted my characters to do and say and then eventually who they were going to be. It was a lot of trial and error. I was learning how to write a novel while writing a novel in a lot of ways. It was a lot longer of a process. I was also, like I said, working full time and in school and a lot busier. I didn't have time to even think about my process. I would write waiting for doctor's appointments and wherever I could. And so now I have a lot more time to structure my writing process. With this book, I wrote a complete first draft, and I did not edit at all while I was writing it. Do you do this?
AM: I freehand my first drafts. So pretty much the same way.
GB: So I freehand also—but do you write the whole thing in one go freehand?
AM: For the first draft I did. I wrote the whole thing freehand. And then I typed up what became the second draft and felt like I had a bird's eye view because I could tell what to cut. I would start to type something and be like, I don't want to read this again. And I would cut it. That was like a really good lesson: if it's boring to me right now, no one's gonna want to read this.
GB: I write freehand, but I don't do it all in one go. I'll write a chapter or section freehand, and then put it in the computer. And then that becomes part of the editing process. Technically, in doing that process, I did read some of it. But I was like, I'm not going back and editing while I'm still drafting. In an MFA program, you're submitting chapters and getting feedback all the time, so you want to edit while you go. For this new book, I wrote a first draft all the way through. And then I went to a writing residency and read the whole thing. I've been making notes on note cards as I go through, and then when I finish, I have a whole stack of cards that I can prioritize. I sort the cards out between the huge edits I need to make, and the little, don't worry too much about these things, kind of edits. And it made the process faster but also way more fun. I don't feel like I need to spend a lot of time doing something I don't want to do at that moment, just because it’s the next edit I’ve come across. Like when you get snagged on something and decide to spend a week working and working on it, and then down the line you eventually cut it. That is the worst.
But it's been really great. Overall, my first book, the vibe is really tense, the whole thing is in a pressure cooker. And it's hyper psychological. It's about really intense relationships. And this book, maybe because I have more space, it feels much more open. And it is more open physically—it's set on an island. There's a lot of being on the beach in physically open spaces. How you write a book, the process of how you write it, the book ends up subsuming that into a feeling. The first book I was writing under such time constraints, and I feel that in the book. It's been a really joyful process this time.
AM: I think that's absolutely right. Somehow the soul of whatever you're doing will make itself into the book. My last semester of grad school, I took a novel writing workshop and we read everyone's full novels.
GB: Did you get an MFA?
AM: I got an MFA and a PhD in creative writing. So I stayed away from the real world for as long as I could.
But in that class, what was interesting is that at some point, it seemed like everyone's psychology would transfer onto the page, whatever they were obsessing over, because it can't escape the book. You're working on this thing every day for X number of years, where you are in your life will inform it and is going to shape it. And that doesn't get discussed enough when we're talking about craft—beyond questions of mood and tone. What is the feel of the book? Which is also the thing the writer knows but no one else ever will. And that's the ghost of the earlier book or the sort of palimpsest of the book is always there, you're going to see the initial foundation of this that was shaping how you were thinking and how you were able to get into that space. But it's only there for you. And that's the fun and I feel that in my book, there are things in there are just for me or just that I feel. Just as there were things I didn't realize that I was working through that other people now see.
GB: It's really fascinating. Like, you can't escape that. Whatever mood you're in or the place you are in your life is going to find its way in. Which is kind of beautiful. Your DNA becomes part of the book.
AM: What's keeping you working on this next book, besides needing to keep the lights on? What's keeping you invested after the first book?
GB: garI feel like I need to grab this moment. Because, like I said, I never thought I was going to be a working writer. Even when I sold the book, and I knew I had a book coming out, I couldn’t comprehend it. I was going to acupuncture once a week, I was seeing a therapist, then I started seeing a career coach. I was having a complete emotional, spiritual, psychological breakdown over whether I should leave my nine-to-five job to pursue writing full-time. And it wasn't just about money. In some ways, I worry less about money now than I did when I had a very steady paycheck coming in. There's something about a biweekly paycheck that is very addictive, and forces you to think about money everytime that check hits your bank account. So when that paycheck cycle is removed, that psychology, the Pavlovian response around when the money comes, kind of goes away.
I feel like I'm so fortunate to have this much time to write and I love writing. It's the thing that makes me happiest. And it's what makes me a full human being. When I'm not writing, I am a shell of a person. And everyone around me knows it. That's what keeps me going. And this next book is one I'm so excited about. I'm actually excited to go through the process of publishing it this time, because I just can't wait for my editor to read it. Sometimes I'll text her and say, “It's so good! I can't wait for you to read it!” And that's so not me. But I feel very excited about it.
That's where I am right now. Like, I'm still really figuring that out. I'm at the beginning of my new career. And I'm taking it one day at a time. I told myself for a long time that diamonds were made under pressure, that I needed to work full time and do a million other things and then squeeze writing in or else I'm not going to have the drive and real world experience to be able to create. And I’ve found that's so not true. It's a complete myth. And every lawyer that told me that was the case was completely fucking wrong.