The Kind of Fun That Bubbles out of Your Chest
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer R.L. Maizes
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R.L. Maizes is the author of the forthcoming novel A Complete Fiction, out November 4 (preorders help writers tremendously!). Maizes’s debut novel, Other People’s Pets, won the 2021 Colorado Book Award in Fiction and was a Library Journal Best Debut of Summer/Fall 2020. She is also the author of the short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper. Her stories have aired on National Public Radio and can be found in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and in The Best Small Fictions 2020. Maizes’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and have aired on NPR. She is a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow and the recipient of a Fellowship Grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for 2024-2025 for her novel-in-progress. Maizes lives in Niwot, Colorado.
What are you reading now?
I’m reading the short story collection Autocorrect by Etgar Keret. I like almost everything he’s written. The work is funny and you can tell he sees the world at a slant and that’s great for any writer. I also just finished the novel Family Family by Laurie Frankel who creates the most wonderful quirky characters. She always has a take on social issues that I don’t see elsewhere.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
I loved The Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren. I admired how independent Pippi was. She threw her own parties, lived with a horse and a monkey, and had a chest full of gold. I thought that would be a great way to grow up. I appreciated her as an iconoclast before I knew the word. When I was a little older there was a sexy book that I hid from my parents. I wish I could remember the title. I grew up as an Orthodox Jew and that book was where I got my first sexual information. A bunch of us passed it around, the dog ears pointing us right where we needed to go.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I don’t reread many novels. For me, some of the pleasure in reading is the surprise. It’s not the only pleasure. I savor the language, too, a verb an author engineered that fits a sentence perfectly or a unique description. But when I re-read fiction there’s less surprise.
A lot of books have helped me through hard times. I had just started Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart when my mother died suddenly. That book saved me. There’s a lot of wisdom in it even for someone like me who isn’t Buddhist, maybe especially for someone like me. When I suffered a career setback Rachel Naomi Remen’s Kitchen Table Wisdom helped me through a period of terrible unhappiness by teaching me that if you believe your purpose on Earth is to love well, setbacks are helpful because the unhappiness you feel can allow you to understand other people’s pain. That idea turned it around for me. I’ve lent, gifted, and recommended those books to many people.
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
I have a flannel shirt that I wear as a layer in CO in the winter. I snagged it on something and it tore, one of those hard-to-fix tears that contains both an x and a y axis. I tried to sew it and that made it worse. But it’s been softened by a thousand washings and is a little loose and fits perfectly over the thermal shirts I wear from October to May. I’ve tried to find a replacement without success. It’s the perfect shirt to wear while writing or knitting or watching my husband make dinner.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?
I was complaining about some aspect of publishing recently and a friend shared something her father always says: “There’s a reason ‘work’ is a four-letter word.” It’s a great reminder about expectations. If we expect things to be easy or without challenges, we add disappointment to the obstacles we’re already bound to encounter. My father has passed, and I appreciated her sharing her father, at least in so far as that piece of wisdom.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
I had a pair of mutts, Tilly and Chance, who occupied my evening hours after I got divorced from my first husband. I was sometimes lonely then, but much less so than I would have been without them. Chance could be aggressive toward other dogs, but he made me feel safe as a woman living without another human. I almost wrote “as a woman living alone,” but that’s the point, I wasn’t living alone. I lost my cat Arie to cancer a few months ago. She was only eleven. I thought I would have her forever. She used to lay on my chest in the evening and remind me to breathe.
What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
I was sure my new novel, A Complete Fiction, which looks at cancel culture and social media addiction would sell quickly because it was timely and funny. Instead, my agent shopped it for a year and a half and two dozen editors rejected it. Every one of those rejections stung. But then I took another look at the manuscript and had an idea. It was a risky idea—the best kind—and one that would either vastly improve the book or cause publishers to shake their heads. I spent six months rewriting the novel and then it sold in two weeks. I’m so happy it didn’t sell earlier and that the new version of the book is the one that will be out in the world.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Hiking in a pine forest. The mountains are my happy place.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I’m sixty-two. I hope I’ll be able to continue doing the things I love—writing, hiking, knitting, and caring for the people close to me—for many years.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
A poet I met at a writing conference once posted a beautiful garment she’d knit on social media and I mused that I’d like to learn how to knit. It was one of those things you say that at best you half-mean. The next thing I knew, that lovely poet had sent me a giant cardboard box filled with expensive knitting supplies: alpaca and sheep’s wool, wood and metal needles of different lengths and thicknesses, and a note full of advice. I was overwhelmed with gratitude but also with fear at the thought of learning something that from a distance seemed terribly difficult. Feeling more than a little guilty, I shoved the box to the top of a closet and forgot about it. Years later, I went through another crisis as a writer. A different crisis than the one I mentioned above, although in writing this it does seem that I’m too-often experiencing professional crises. I wasn’t sure how to move forward. Around the same time, a few people gave me handmade gifts: a glazed ceramic mug, a copper and bead necklace, a watercolor. Handcrafted presents are such unique expressions of care. Receiving them made me wish I could make something, too. I found the box my friend had sent, googled “knitting tutorial,” and up popped about ten thousand results. I cued up two different ones. As we get older, we risk becoming less flexible and thinking we can’t learn new things. Teaching myself to knit gave me a shot of confidence. To my surprise, while learning I found myself having the kind of fun that bubbles out of your chest. The experience helped me realize that I’d made writing into a chore and that the solution to my career crisis was to lighten up. I owe that insight and my new hobby to the kindness of my friend.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
Awe is a guiding force in my life. I moved from Queens, NY, to Boulder, CO, thirty years ago to live next to the Rocky Mountains and be reminded every day that life is bigger than the routine challenges that sometimes consume us. To watch a buck graze on a plum tree and foxes taunt my dogs. To walk along a trail and see hummingbirds feed on pine sap and say the thanksgiving prayers I was taught as a child.
If you enjoyed R.L.’s questionnaire, you may also enjoy this one with Sophia Efthimiatou:
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“Teaching myself to knit gave me a shot of confidence. To my surprise, while learning I found myself having the kind of fun that bubbles out of your chest. The experience helped me realize that I’d made writing into a chore and that the solution to my career crisis was to lighten up.” I keep learning a similar lesson. I also live near the Colorado mountains and love thinking of them as daily perspective givers. A great interview—thanks to you both!
Beautiful reflections.