Author Tania Hershman’s latest book is a
collection of short short stories called My Mother Was an Upright Piano. Tania runs
The Short Review which exclusively reviews short fiction collections, new and
old. After making a living for 13 years as a science journalist, writing for
publications such as WIRED and NewScientist, Tania gave it all up to write
fiction. Lucky for us :)
Accompanying the reviews in The Short
Review, there is often an author interview and it struck me that Tania had
never been asked the questions. So she is here today, answering her own
questions, on Women Rule Writer. Enjoy!
1) How long did it take you to write all
the stories in your collection?
Wow, it is very strange to finally be
having to answer the same questions I've been asking authors for the past 4.5
years for The Short Review but never thought
I'd be asking myself! Anyway, the fictions in my book were all written between
2007 and early 2012.
2) Did you have a collection in mind when
you were writing them?
No, not at all. For a long time I wasn't
convinced that a collection of very short fictions worked. I thought perhaps so
many stories would be too much for a reader all together - I'd not really read
any successful examples of such collections. But then I read both Stefanie
Freele's Feeding Strays and David Gaffney's The Half Life of Songs, and saw how
it could be done, and done so well. So I started contemplating, but the stories
were all written with no thought of collection.
3) How did you choose which stories to
include and in what order?
I had over 150 that I'd written during that
period and so - in contrast to my first collection, which contained basically
everything I'd written up to that point
- I got to pick my favourites, the ones I really love, the Top 56, you
could say. That's a really nice and different feeling. I can never put my own
stories in order - my fabulous publisher,
Richard, at Tangent Books, did it for me. We didn't want any conscious thought
of ordering by theme so he tried as much as possible to mix them up - but then you
read them and things jump out at you. Like how many times trees appear. And
certain images I clearly like to use, that I'd ever seen before!
4) What does the word "story"
mean to you?
Oh god, I always admired our interviewees'
answers to this question, I never knew how to answer it. I think, for me, it
means anything that transports me, however briefly, outside my own skin, into
another world. Not just short stories but any stories - films, TV, novels.
5) Do you have a "reader" in mind
when you write stories?
I write to amuse myself, to move myself. I
write to express things I wonder about. I don't write with any thought of a reader, I am always, always amazed
that anybody who isn't in my head ever connects to anything I've written. And
doubly amazed when they see things I didn't know were in there. Having readers
is a miraculous thing, I think.
6) Is there anything you'd like to ask
someone who has read your collection, anything at all?
These tiny fictions were written with no
thought of a collection, of a book. Do they work together, are they somehow in
conversation with each other, despite that?
7) How does it feel knowing that people are
buying your books?
The second time around, it is a different
feeling. The first book was elation mixed with terrified trepidation. This time
it's more pride, that I've actually managed a second book, that I kept on going
and someone had enough faith in me to publish another one. I will never take it
for granted - the publications or the fact that people spend money to buy my
books. I would like to give them away (sorry, Richard) but am learning to deal
with the fact that I do need people to actually purchase them. I am very
grateful for anyone who does that, and I really love the idea of my book being
on someone's shelf, in their house, in different countries. It feels like a
little piece of me is in all these places.
8) What are you working on now?
Right now, an idea for a
biomedically-inspired screenplay, as well as a science-inspired radio play. I
am also co-editor of a new textbook on writing short stories, forthcoming in
2014 from the Arvon Foundation, so about to start work on that with my
wonderful co-editor, Courttia Newland. I am also toying with the idea of a
collection of science-inspired fictions, a collection that I conceive of as a
book from the outset. I have a number of stories written, but I am also
wondering about the future of publishing and what a collection means for a
short story writer, what will it mean in a few years? Not sure. I'm always
writing pieces which might be called flash fiction or might be prose poems, who
knows?
9) What are the last three short story
collections you read?
The Weight of a Human Heart, by Ryan
O'Neill, his third collection - I just met him at a conference and am loving
this new book! Revenge of the Lawn, by Richard Brautigan, a collection of 62
ultra-short stories first published in 1972 and which make me so happy I've
taken to carrying the book around with me. And This Cake is for the Party, by
Sarah Selecky, which was recommended to me by Ali Smith and which I greatly
enjoyed and reviewed for The Short Review.
*
Tania is teaching the flash fiction
workshop at this year's Cork Short Story Festival. Go here for details and to
book.
