'The toughest and kindest and weirdest people you will ever meet. '
Author Steve Fox talks about the Midwest, writing the unexpected, and finding joy in a tomato.
Author Steve Fox’s short story Exile was the first-place winner of the Wisconsin People & Ideas contest through the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters in 2019, the same year my short story Spirit Box placed second. We would have met during the Wisconsin Book Festival reading that fall in Madison, but I was unable to attend, and my good friend Jess Riley read my story in my place. But Steve reached out later to say ‘hi’ and we chatted about writing and shared some works-in-progress. Later, he mentioned that his short fiction collection Sometimes Creek would be published through Cornerstone Press at UW-Stevens Point, and he encouraged me to send my work in as well.
Steve, 58, is based in Hudson, Wisconsin, and works a day job as a software engineer. He chatted with me about the Midwest, writing the unexpected, and how creativity supports problem-solving.
I think a lot of people may have the idea that nothing much happens in the Midwest or that it’s a creative dead zone. Why and how has the Midwest as a region been an influence on your writing?
The intensity of the climate here, and therefore setting, drives a lot of my writing. I’ve lived and worked in a lot of places like Brazil, Spain, Argentina, New Zealand, and they look at you with amused disbelief when you tell then that it can get as cold as minus forty and as hot as plus forty Celsius (-40 to 104 F; "-40 to +40" sounds cooler).
That means that just the weather alone—if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute, right?—makes this an interesting place. Then the generations of people who live here and talk about leaving but never do. Or the ones who do leave and are involuntarily drawn back. These are some of the toughest and kindest and weirdest people you will ever meet.
I am enamored of the beauty, size, mystique, and power of Lakes Superior and Michigan. The way they embrace our state.
Living in a different culture should have an impact on your perspective, which will naturally bleed into your creative side no matter if you believe you have a creative side or not.
Did your software engineering work take you abroad? Did your travels/experiences influence your creativity/writing/perspective?
Living in a different culture should have an impact on your perspective, which will naturally bleed into your creative side no matter if you believe you have a creative side or not.
But in my case the effort was deliberate. I traveled to Spain, Argentina, and Brazil to enroll in universities. I was there specifically to learn about the language and art and literature of a place. I wrote a trunk novel while in Brazil. I keep meaning to pick it up.
In Argentina, I read the novel Rayuela, which translates to Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar. The narrative is structured such that you skip around the chapters—the end of each bears a number, the chapter to which you need to skip to next—and read until you eventually come to a page marked fin. Cortázar himself says that the reader is welcome to progress through the book in linear fashion from the start until reaching said fin, but that would be far less interesting.
It was while riding buses and trains to and from work in Buenos Aires (where I worked as a translator and teacher) and reading this novel that a lot of the way I see the intricacies of the threads of individuals’ lives that make up societies came together. Everyone coming and going, getting on and off, and switching seats on the bus. How we are all tesserae in a greater mosaic. And I wanted to write it down.
The only foreign country my software career took me was New Zealand. One ninety-day contract became another, then another, and eventually the contracts got longer and I ended up working there for over two years, with a few jaunts back on the Auckland-Chicago shuttle thrown in—one of them to get married!
I see beauty in a slice of pie, dread in a bowl of soup, joy in a tomato, and anguish in dry dog food. There’s poetry in the prosaic.
What inspired you to write Sometimes Creek? What's your favorite piece within the collection?
I don’t know if I set out to write a collection like this intentionally. When I first started to take writing more seriously again, about ten-twelve years ago, I wanted to write something unexpected and different. That generally involves a view of the planet and the mundane through the same subverted and bent lens thorough which I see a lot of things. I see beauty in a slice of pie, dread in a bowl of soup, joy in a tomato, and anguish in dry dog food. There’s poetry in the prosaic.
The overall vibe of these stories pull them together like a magnetic force. It was a subconscious and relatively organic process. I have written other collections in parallel fashion to this one. Those collections each orbit their own, different axis, and thus weren’t included in this group.
I don’t think I have a favorite story. But I will say that pretty much every story—no matter the tone or the theme—once its voice finds me, becomes my favorite.
As the youngest by so many years, I used to role play a lot, see myself as each person in the family, concurrently, how their brains were working, what they decided on, what drove their decisions, and the nature of their motives.
What's one of your first experiences of creativity or imagination?
I am the youngest of five, and by many years at that. My sisters taught me to read at a young age and so I pulled down whatever book I could find. I used to read the dictionary. Seriously. Not very interesting, but we had one of those thick old Webster’s printed during time when they defined words with complete sentences. Sentences that usually contained other words that I had to look up in order to understand the meaning of the one I originally needed a definition for. It set off a chain reaction of flipping through the dictionary probably for an hour at a time. I don’t know if this is very creative, but it did propel a lot of things at once in my head.
As the youngest by so many years, I used to role play a lot, see myself as each person in the family, concurrently, how their brains were working, what they decided on, what drove their decisions, and the nature of their motives.
In school I used to write stories for my teachers when I got done with classwork. Sometimes I did that instead of the grammar assignments. I was occasionally reprimanded, but mostly I was encouraged. My eighth-grade teacher read one of them aloud to the class. I was thrilled and mortified all at once.
Also there was Old Time Radio nights. During my single digits and into my teens it was still common to hear replays of classic episodes of The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, and big hits like the War of the Worlds. I’d lay on the floor of my basement with the lights out and listen to them all.
Have you experienced any barriers to your creativity /or pursuing a creative career?
I think I always considered writing a hobby, and never took it so seriously. I didn’t get a lot of encouragement from my parents. The attitude was always, Well, art is nice, honey. But you need to make a living…
But most of my my teachers encouraged me to write.
Current barriers for me may be that I’m an older guy and I’m not writing commercial fiction. You know, girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-gets-boy-back stuff. But I’m sticking to the avant-garde, if people still call it that, as much as I can because that’s what flows from my pen.
And so I just keep writing the best stories possible and reading what is prolific and contemporary writers like Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Camille Bordas, Ottessa Moshfegh, Sheila Heiti.
One thing that helps my writing, I think, is varying perspectives and points-of-view. The stories in Sometimes Creek, for example, come from all points-of-view and narrators of differing gender and age. But they’re all processing something that we all deal with like trauma, loss, dread, anxiety.
I see story threads — and this is where all my in-your-head stuff comes from — everywhere. Supermarkets, etc. shopping carts bump, looks are exchanged, lives intersect. That’s where I spin stories from.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Everywhere. I see stories when crossing the street. I do read a lot of different things, too, and keep asking What if? But getting back to the mundane, I see story threads — and this is where all my in-your-head stuff comes from — everywhere. Supermarkets, etc. shopping carts bump, looks are exchanged, lives intersect. That’s where I spin stories from. The challenge, the inspiration for me a lot of the time is to make the mundane interesting, intriguing, and compelling. I mean, even Tony Soprano has to buy groceries, right?
Do you have a writing process ?
No. No process, really. The brunt of my writing takes place between five and seven in the morning and ten at night and one in the morning. Occasionally I’ve written through the night. The moment when a story hits its stride can be very energizing, and the concept of time slides away. But mostly I write around my life. For example, “Then It Would Be Raining” was written nearly entirely on my phone while running kids to events and practices. The process for that story had an impact on the narrative structure itself—very fragmented into pieces of microfiction almost.
But I don’t commit to any five-a.m.-writing-club kind of thing. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a fit for everyone. For me, that’s before kids are up and when I can spend more than twenty uninterrupted minutes on my pages.
Do you work on any creative pursuits outside of writing?
I am more an appreciator of creativity than I am a creator of other arts—sculpture, painting, music. I take it all in, plus I read a lot.
My day job—software engineering (computer programming)— requires considerable creativity and resourcefulness for solving complex problems in a clever and concise manner. Probably something people generally don’t consider when they hear ‘computer programming.'
Looking at your story from outside the ‘box’ can give you a different peek at characters’ motives and what’s actually at stake.
What are some ways you need to 'think outside the box' to solve problems?
Probably the quickest and easiest way of getting outside that dreaded box or whatever rut of thinking one finds themselves or their group in or for improving a process is to start asking the question Why? This usually sparks a regress of questions that can unwind an entire project / endeavor. But in a good way, even though it often comes with some pain. The unsaid answers to the annoying Why? questions can be difficult to accept. I think large organizations fall victim to never asking themselves this. Or if they do, they are unwilling to act on what they know deep within to be true.
So "thinking outside the box" means ditching the status quo and starting fresh and confront the reasoning behind your existing process. Some not-so-technical examples: Why are we asking app’s users for their zip code? Their age? Why are there three buttons on the Home Screen of the app? Should there be any buttons at all? What experience do we want users to have when the the app loads? Why did the user download the app in the first place? What was their compelling motive?
The same goes for writing/telling a story. Why is the man walking down the street? Why is he dressed the way he is? Is that how he always dresses? Why? Why did he just say what he just said and why does he always misspeak and why doesn’t anyone ever believe him when he explains his misspeaking? Looking at your story from outside the ‘box’ can give you a different peek at characters’ motives and what’s actually at stake. I think that’s why I like to vary POV so often in my stories.
On the reverse side, does your work as a software engineer ever help you with your fiction?
Not sure if there’s a direct relationship, but rewriting software code is a lot like story revision. You have a messy first draft, or meta code with some elements hard-coded in there just to get it all to work. Then you spend time neatening it up and eventually submit it for peer review. You take the reviews and continue to refine to make things easier to maintain, run better, and work as expected.
Work-related research usually leads to other threads that I can pull on, and gives me an idea for something to write about or weave into the fabric of a story.
Many of my work colleagues are really talented and engage in creative side pursuits. Painting, music, sculpture, woodwork, theater, voice, cuisine. So just being in their presence is motivating.
What recharges you?
I recharge by walking. And I think in a lot of ways, walking is writing. It’s the old adage that while you are in a relaxed state of mind that the solution to a problem you’ve been noodling for hours becomes evident. Happens to me all the time. I’ll stop mid-stride to jot something down or make a note on my phone.
What's something people might not know about you?
I can run backwards. Also, I’m a part-time vegan.
What advice would you share with the next gen and/or people who want to pursue their creative side at a later age?
Be persistent, be bold.
For the older folk: What are you waiting for? You have too much to offer the world. Get moving.
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