Maria Adelmann, GIRLS OF A CERTAIN AGE
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[0:37]Maria Adelman is the author of Girls of a Certain Age.
[0:42]Her work has been published by Tinhouse and plus one, the three-penny review, Indiana review, Epic, McSweenie's internet tendency, Alaska quarterly review, Michigan quarterly review, and many others.
[0:52]She has an MFA infection from the University of Virginia.
[0:55]Welcome, Maria. Thank you so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:59]Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
[1:02]So Girls of a Certain Age is a collection of stories.
[1:05]Why don't you tell listeners what inspired you to put this collection together?
[1:10]And what, in general, this whole collection is about.
[1:12]So the collection is 13 stories, and the narrators are all women, and they're all told in the first person.
[1:21]And I would say the overarching themes are it's about the complexities of modern girl and womanhood,
[1:28]what it means to live in the female body, and also how people deal with different kinds of loss, regular losses in life.
[1:37]And I wrote a lot of it in my 20s, so a lot of it was partially me figuring things out as I went along.
[1:44]And it turned out that a lot of the stories had similar themes and I kind of fit together in this collection.
[1:50]Beautiful. So where's, I know you got your MFA. Is this part of your program or when did you do this?
[1:55]When did you start writing the essays?
[1:57]Well, some I actually, the very first drafts of, I wrote it college.
[2:02]Wow.
[2:03]And then I got a job and stopped writing, and then I went to an MFA program just to get some time to write.
[2:11]And a lot of the stories I wrote there, and then a few of them afterwards.
[2:16]Wow.
[2:17]I have to tell you the one that has stuck with me the most, although I really liked a lot of them.
[2:22]But the one about flower, the dog, and the kick in the shin to the woman.
[2:27]And the truck and the twist at the end that I kind of didn't see coming even though it was only like a two page story.
[2:34]And just the intensity of that story.
[2:37]And what it meant about abuse and relationship.
[2:41]And oh my gosh, like you fit a lot into one little story.
[2:45]That's, I mean, and over and over and over again.
[2:47]But that I don't know.
[2:48]I just keep thinking about this half pit bull in the van and the pickup truck and the diner.
[2:54]Oh my gosh.
[2:55]Anyway.
[2:56]Well, thank you.
[2:58]I appreciate that.
[2:59]That story is actually funny because I started it with this idea that, you know, a woman would find like, you know,
[3:08]people toast their bread and they see like Madonna or something in the toast.
[3:13]I thought she would, this woman would see Jesus in her toast.
[3:16]And she'd want to keep the toast.
[3:18]And that was my idea for that story.
[3:20]And I wrote about that.
[3:22]And then it turned out the story was really about her relationship and this dog and abuse.
[3:28]Yeah.
[3:29]So I kept calling the file Jesus toast story.
[3:32]And slowly there was no Jesus in the story.
[3:35]There was no toast.
[3:36]And it was a completely different story.
[3:38]But the file was still called that.
[3:43]Amazing.
[3:44]Also, the first one and only the good about Hugh and all of that.
[3:49]When you wrote the sentence, I was like, this is so perfect.
[3:51]You said, I heard a snippet of landslide.
[3:53]Songs are like tarot cards.
[3:55]Tell me about that.
[3:56]I love that analogy.
[3:57]And it's so true.
[3:58]Just tell me a little bit about choosing that analogy and sentence and all of that.
[4:04]Yeah.
[4:05]I think that has a lot to do with reading and writing.
[4:09]You have to leave space and the text for people to see what they want to see and see part of themselves in the story or the poem or whatever.
[4:18]And yeah.
[4:19]I just, yeah.
[4:20]I listen to songs all the time.
[4:22]And that's about me.
[4:23]That's about this.
[4:24]And someone else will listen and think it's about something else.
[4:27]So what are some of your favorite types of music?
[4:30]What do you like to listen to?
[4:31]I'm actually, I mean, I listen to a lot of 60s music, older songs.
[4:37]And then I say music is one of the art forms.
[4:40]I know almost nothing about and I want to keep it that way because I don't want to be able to judge it.
[4:47]You know, I read a book and I think, oh, I don't like this.
[4:50]It's not my style.
[4:51]And I just want to stake a completely non judgmental about music.
[4:55]So I can listen to my Taylor Swift and not worry about whether it's good or bad.
[5:01]I love that.
[5:02]Sort of an unexamined art.
[5:05]It gives you even more benefit.
[5:08]So tell me about your process of writing.
[5:10]I know you started these essays a long time ago, but when you sit down to write a story and obviously they change over time as you already have said, like, where do you like to write?
[5:20]Where do you, how do you fit it into your regular life? Do you wait for inspiration?
[5:24]Or do you say like, okay, Saturday mornings, I'm going to go to a coffee shop and write.
[5:27]What is, how does writing fit into your life?
[5:30]At some point, you know, I was working a full-time job right after college.
[5:36]And I didn't have any time to write.
[5:39]There was just no way.
[5:40]I didn't have enough energy, really.
[5:42]I wasn't going to ever fit it in.
[5:44]And that's why I went to the MFA program.
[5:46]And after that, I decided to freelance so I could spend half my time writing and half my time making some money.
[5:54]So, so I try to leave my mornings for writing now.
[5:59]Is my goal?
[6:00]And I don't know how sustainable that is long term, but I try to write in the morning when I have the most energy.
[6:07]And where I write that, you know, I have almost always lived in shared spaces.
[6:14]My desk is in right now in the living room, which is also the dining room.
[6:20]So, I don't tend to be too picky about that. I'll write in cafes or just at home or wherever I can manage it.
[6:29]So, that's the logistics.
[6:33]That's amazing.
[6:34]You also wrote in your story, Pets are for rich kids.
[6:38]Just a really interesting title.
[6:40]Got to love it.
[6:41]You named one of the characters, Susie cakes.
[6:44]And I just wanted to know like that is my favorite all-time favorite bakery in California.
[6:49]And I don't know if you've ever heard of it or seen it, but you have to like do something with the publication with Susie cakes now because it's amazing.
[6:57]Just letting you know.
[6:58]I had no idea that was, that was a bakery.
[7:01]Yeah, in the story, that's a potbelly pig.
[7:03]And I just love pet names can be so funny.
[7:07]I actually did for each with potbelly pigs.
[7:11]And there was a potbelly pig named Oreo.
[7:13]And I was thinking of that and somehow got to Susie cakes.
[7:17]I just thought was funny.
[7:19]All right.
[7:20]Well, when we stop this podcast, you have to go and Google Susie cakes.
[7:24]And if you ever end up in the California area, because they also, I think, have stores in Texas not to keep talking about this, but they have this like what's about like a marble cake.
[7:33]Anyway, it's amazing.
[7:35]And anyone listening who's in California and who has not gotten to Susie cakes, you must go.
[7:39]I should make them a sponsor.
[7:40]But anyway, it's one of my favorites.
[7:43]I have to say also in the story when I'm forgetting the names here.
[7:48]I think this was still the story about Hugh and someone's brother comes back for the military.
[7:53]Am I getting this right?
[7:54]And her brother was at Leanne or is that the other story?
[7:57]No, different story.
[7:59]I can barely even like keep my kids name straight, let alone like the 13 sets of characters in your book, but I have the stories in my head.
[8:05]So when her brother comes home and she opens the door and things like how could I who is this person?
[8:11]And he won't even let her hug him, right?
[8:13]Even though they're siblings after he gets home from Afghanistan.
[8:16]He says like not in the, not in the uniform.
[8:18]So he like carefully goes and hangs it up and then comes back and she's like, okay, how about now?
[8:24]He's like, okay, now is fine.
[8:26]And then they kind of cuddle as, you know, she goes through this horrific abortion essentially.
[8:31]Anyway, that was another really moving story.
[8:34]Tell me a little bit about the military aspect and it seemed so real.
[8:38]Do you have experience with somebody who has come from, you know, a deployment or how did you decide to incorporate that element?
[8:46]Yeah, there's a few of my stories that incorporate someone going to or coming home from war.
[8:51]And my brother was in the military for 10 years in the Air Force and his best friend was also in the military.
[8:59]So that's where that comes from.
[9:01]And, you know, that story is made up, but there's a sibling relationship that is close, but you see the tension in that scene, you know, like, don't know, you can't hug me now and the sisters like waiting.
[9:13]Okay, now can we hug and there is sometimes that kind of with tension with sister brother relationship.
[9:19]So yeah, I was just sort of exploring what it means to have a family member leave for a long period of time and be in an unsafe situation and how it.
[9:29]I think how it feels for the people who are left behind because there's another story about a wife who's husband has been deployed.
[9:37]And so that's how I got sort of to exploring that theme.
[9:41]And is your brother, does is he still deployed?
[9:44]Is he back or what's he's in the US and he's out of the military now.
[9:49]And I know you captured this feeling in the stories, but tell me what it's like to have someone you love.
[9:55]You know, you have like little details like you're always sort of checking the time and wondering where they are and things like that.
[10:00]Tell me a little more about that feeling because that just tell me what that's like living with the knowledge that somebody love is like
[10:07]It's such risk. He wasn't deployed for very long actually with station mostly in the US
[10:13]So at that I feel lucky for but yeah, it just leaves you sort of nervous all the time
[10:18]I think and I think actually there's probably a similar feeling a lot of people are feeling now with you know high-risk relatives and COVID times
[10:27]They're not being able to see them, you know, you're always wondering are they okay?
[10:32]I mean like even now I want to call my family all the time just make sure people are okay and you know
[10:38]That's kind of I think the feeling when you have someone in a situation that's dangerous and and can get to them
[10:46]So what are you
[10:48]Hoping for this book is coming out in February and I'm sure I'll be releasing this right when it comes out
[10:53]Although we're doing this ahead of time, but what is like the game plan for you?
[10:57]Do you want to just write forever?
[10:58]Do you want to do more?
[11:00]Full-length novels do you want to keep doing stories do you want to do like what what's your wish list?
[11:06]I feel like you're still so young and there's so much to do like what's your
[11:10]What's on your bucket list in the writing area? I don't feel so young
[11:15]I feel like I need to to make those decisions
[11:19]Soon I really love the short story. I love reading the short story
[11:23]I mean they notoriously do not sell as well as novels I'm working on a novel right now
[11:29]And so that's sort of like the next hurdle I have in front of me
[11:34]But I mean personally I hope for a creative life whether that's more
[11:40]Other arts or writing or both. I just really don't if I can help it
[11:45]I don't want to be tied to a full-time job. I want to be like creating as much as I can
[11:51]So that's already a pretty big ask I think
[11:57]What advice would you have to aspiring authors?
[11:59]I guess I mean there's a lot of advice that everyone says that it often seems true
[12:05]You know read a lot and kill your darlings etc
[12:08]But
[12:10]Something that really stuck with me as a visiting writer at UVA and I don't remember
[12:16]It was but they said a lot of writers do it right
[12:20]But they don't do it well
[12:22]And I think that means that you can write at something that's technically perfect
[12:28]That can sort of lack the heart and energy of someone like on a journey of discovery
[12:35]And I think you know it's sort of like Netflix right now puts out a movie a movie a movie every second
[12:40]And they're good. There nothing is wrong about them
[12:44]But they're not they lack that heart and energy and so I think that that is sort of
[12:50]You know one of the most important parts of writing is less trying to get it perfect and just instead trying to find the heart of the story
[12:59]Amazing. What are you reading now? Like what do you like to read? I love reading short stories. I just finished black light
[13:07]You heard of that one
[13:09]It was it was nominated for some prize last year. It was a really good collection of stories
[13:15]All of them about email
[13:18]Characters mostly I think that was really good. I read some nonfiction
[13:24]I do read some novels
[13:26]In a while
[13:27]I find it hard to be in one voice while I'm writing
[13:31]So I find it easier to read a short story where you can get into a voice
[13:35]Get out of it and then if I'm not writing I'll start starting to the novels a little bit more interesting. I love it
[13:43]Well congratulations on this book and the collection of stories and I'm gonna be like holding my shin and you know
[13:50]sympathetic pain empathy whatever
[13:55]For the story that I can't get out of my head and it was lovely talking to you and I'm really excited for your books to come out
[14:01]Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay. Have a great day and thanks for coming back. Okay. Bye. Bye
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