KMWR: Can you tell us about how “Hurricane Séance” came to be? I fell in love with this story immediately—of course the poker table got me, but beyond that I was struck by the atmosphere that you set up so precisely: the whiskey tumblers, votive candles, records playing, and ultimately, the group of friends gathered so intimately and yet tension is immediately established as they discuss their lost loved ones and their proximity to that love.
BP: It started off as kind of a dialogue exercise. Which is embarrassingly obvious-past-MFAer behavior. But I got some really good advice early on that realistic dialogue involves people talking past each other, over each other, and not understanding each other, not answering each other directly. We are self-centered interrupters who live in our own heads and we’re often quite stupid when responding to those most close to us. When people answer questions directly, you’re going to have a hard time making that dialogue believable, for example. So I wanted to just really lean into that.
Then I started adding what I’d just call objects or decorations. The kinds of objects you just throw in there to create a texture to the story. Memories, artifacts that convey a sense of place, the right color and items that populate a room, and of course characters. The objects on top of the craft—or whatever—really make the thing. And then things start happening. Weird how simple the ingredients are yet how hard it is to make the thing work. Anyway, I also spent significant time in Florida, going to adult ed classes on parapsychology and visiting a spiritualist community. Getting my palm read. Tarot. My friend had a wild experience with a medium. That’s a whole other story that’s buried in this story. Going back to that notion of objects: it’s all just collecting objects that are meaningful to you and populating them into this little world of sentences.
KMWR: I’m intrigued by the gatherings that make up your fiction. I’m thinking of your previously published work “Acolytes” in conversation with “Hurricane Séance” in which you write, “We’d all gone to college together ten years ago at UF. For various reasons we didn’t get together that often anymore. But we always got together for a hurricane.” Labor Day parties and midnight hurricane soirées, I’m wondering what draws you to using gatherings as a setting?
BP: I love a good gathering or public event as a way to really set up some trouble. It goes back to populating stories with a texture, using objects and visuals and other stimuli, the particulars that you’re going to find at a barbeque or fair or venue. It might be a cliché to set a story in, say, a bar. But a bar gets you towards the right idea. Shit can really go down, and it also might look interesting. Or sound interesting, to sort of segue into your next question.
KMWR: Similarly, as I read your story “West” in BULL, I noticed music plays a big part in your fiction. I’d love to hear about how music influences your work. I’m wondering if you listen to these songs as you write?
BP: Music is the most beautiful form of artistic expression and you don’t need language for it to get the tear ducts working. Plenty of instrumental guitar-work has moved me beyond what any piece of fiction ever could. I’ve been a guitar player and write my own songs, have played a lot of gigs in bars. I can’t separate that part of my life from fiction. I think a lot of writers wildly—and cynically, in a nasty way—underestimate how much craft know-how you can gain from musicians and filmmakers and visual artists. A deeper texture can be achieved in your fiction. And it’s so fulfilling to get just the right song into the background of a story. Filmmakers do it all the time. Scorsese always seems to pop in a Stones song at just the right time. It enhances the scene. Boggles my mind to think why fiction would be any different. But fiction writers and poets think they’re very special. To answer your other question: I generally don’t listen to music when I write, but when I do it tends to work out. I should probably do it more. But music with words can be a huge distraction. However, songs knock around in my head while I’m writing. And songs can really deepen a sense of place. You’re going to visualize a place differently, any place populated by characters, if ‘90s country is playing versus Chappel Roan or Dylan or Pantera.
KMWR: What is your ideal writing session, and what do you like to have nearby as you write?
BP: Mornings are ideal.Home. Coffee is a must. I like to get a cup in me, get some words down and then sort of pace around. Sit back down and do it over again. There’s no good place for it. If I could get a private cabin on a body of water, very cliché, I would be much happier. I’ve dreamt for years about renting some Idaho panhandle shack on a river for a weekend to get something new going and that has not happened yet.
KMWR: What kind of habits do you have with writing--good and bad?
BP: My worst habit is sitting down to write and getting up and giving up five minutes later because I’m not “inspired” or whatever. I think “inspiration” is a fancy word for being motivated and just getting hard at work on a thing, and feeling “uninspired” is just an excuse for being lazy. You’d really just rather look at your phone than come up with the next image or phrase, because that’s pretty damn hard work. My best habits are turning off my inner-editor and just letting it rip, and then always being interested in the textures of a setting, in the objects and sensory details. I try and get as much of that on a page in a first draft as possible, so that I’m actually interested in what’s happening. You have to inhabit these spaces with the characters while you’re writing and nobody on the creative end of whatever world’s being fashioned wants to be bored.
KMWR: Are you working on anything new?
BP: I finished a novel early this year, have another one in progress, and banged out a couple stories. But I’ve been taking a little break on producing anything brand new. I’m mostly tending to existing manuscripts, trying to get the finished novel out there, gear up to work on the next, tidy up my short story collection manuscript. Taking a breather is good for me, and I’m never ashamed to do it and don’t buy any advice that says you should write every day.
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Brett Puryear was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana. His work appears in The Iowa Review, CutBank, Writer's Foundry Review, Wildsam, and elsewhere. He also writes the Substack "Pedal Steel." He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his family.