As some of you know, I write an occasional column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, "Speaking for all Christians Exactly Like Me." The column came about as a result of McSweeney's annual contest, which awards ten or so people with an opportunity to write for the site for a year. Today, I'm starting a new series of interviews with the other nine winners (or as many of them as I can track down and get to return my emails).

Ian Orti

My first guest is Ian Orti, author of the McSweeney's column "Any Given Wednesday Afternoon," as well as two books, L (and things fall apart) and The Olive and the Dawn. I've never conducted an interview before, so this is sort of half-interview, half-conversation.

Also, it's about half-serious, half-nonsense, as most of the things I put on this website are. You'll probably figure this out on your own, but my questions and responses are in italics.

The Interview

JJ: We're going to start with the part where I stalk you on the internet and ask related questions. So let's begin with your two books The Olive and the Dawn and L. What do you think is important about those books? Is there anything you regret about them as you look back on them now?

IO: There's nothing I regret about those books because they were written honestly and sincerely at the time. Maybe if I open one and don't like the writing I might cringe a bit.

JJ: I react the same way to a lot of my stories. Actually, it kind of goes in shifts for me. Sometimes I'll read a story I wrote a while ago and be kind of shocked at how good I think it is, then six months or six years later I will read the same story again, and want to throw up a bit at every other sentence.

IO: I think that's par for most writers. Both books came out within 6 months of each other, and I signed book deals for each within the same month. The difference being that my first book, which took ten years to write, came out after my second book, which took a year to write. Is that confusing?

JJ: Not terribly. I understand.

IO: The first book [to be released], The Olive and the Dawn, is a novel dressed as a short story collection. It's about a somewhat-damaged-goods individual who thinks he's found a glitch in the human design and thinks he can outsmart God. Of course he's totally wrong, but that doesn't ruin the story at all. It's really about the grey zone - the non-space after trauma where there doesn't seem to be any past, present, or future.

The second book, L, is probably closer to a fictocritical essay disguised as a very slow moving experimental novel about an old man in a shitty marriage who rents a flat to an odd woman before both of their worlds come apart.

JJ: Was this "dressing" for The Olive and the Dawn important to getting it published? Like, did the mere fact that it was labeled "Short Story Collection" instead of "Novel" make the publisher want to invest in it? Or was that just happenstance?

IO: The dressing was actually somewhat necessary for the publisher since they were looking for a short story collection. But there are recurring characters and a single narrative and chronological arc for them. As a story collection it wasn't necessary to bang the reader over the head with the fact that the characters in the different stories were connected, but as a story collection it was also necessary that the stories stood alone as individual elements as well.

JJ: So let me key in on that word "fictocritical," that you used to describe L. I found that while I was in college (I spent six years in and out of creative writing classes) a lot of what I wrote came out as essays disguised as fiction. I would read something by Bakhtin and then write a story trying to illustrate dialogics, or I would muddle my way through Derrida and then muddle my way through a story that was really about how I muddled my way through Derrida. Most of the time these stories were really just ways for me to think through certain difficult concepts, to attempt to get them straight in my head, and writing fiction about them seemed to work better for me than actually writing the research papers about them.

IO: I like the form, relatively new as it is. It's refreshing to read and it's a nice thorn in the side of the literary establishment.

JJ: Also, you seem to think both of these books are sort of disguised as something other than what they are. Why do you think that is?

IO: I think because I enjoy fiction that's a little cryptic. I think both novels are sort of riddles for the reader to piece together -- though doing so is not really necessary either. But I think both invite a second visit back to some pages.

JJ: So how'd you get started writing? For a general audience, that is.

IO: My first-first-first book was a comic book I co-wrote with a friend when I was growing up. It was about an animal with an uncanny resemblance to Bam Bam and a cat which was more like a svelte Garfield. I drew Animal and my friend drew the Cat. It was called Spaz Kat and Animal and it was about two friends that went on intergalactic adventures. Maybe fifteen years after that I studied writing in university or something.

JJ: Why do you think you write?

IO: I write because I can't help it. That's the main reason. The second reason is that I loved how books made me feel and I wanted to be able to do that.

JJ: Who do you think of as your audience? Maybe another way of asking this is, who is your perfect reader?

IO: My perfect audience is one that is more into the way a story is told rather than what story is told. I have a friend who once told a story at a party about his dad getting a good deal on frozen waffles at a supermarket. That's all it was - an old man getting a deal on waffles - but when he told the story he had the whole room wrapped around his fingers. That was an important writing lesson for me.

JJ: Could you say a little more about this waffle story? Like, what was it that your friend did that you think elevated it into something interesting and (possibly) meaningful? And is that similar to what you try to do?

IO: No. It was just the way he told the story. Which is what a successful book comes down to… how well the story it is telling… is told.

JJ: So, besides the waffle story, what's the last book you read that you loved, and why did you love it?

IO: It was a long, and I mean a very long time after finishing university that I could read a novel and enjoy it. Studying literature nearly ruined books for me. Then about three years ago I moved to the coast of Ecuador for six months and brought a stack of books. A lot of classics. But the one that brought me back to loving books again was Peter Pan. I know. I shouldn't admit that. But it was.

JJ: That's sort of fascinating, given your mention of the waffle story, since Barrie has this super peculiar way of turning a phrase, so that they seem deceptively simple, and yet profound, and yet nonsense. The famous location of Neverwhere, "second to the right, and straight on til morning," is like that. Really you could just open a random page of Peter Pan and put your finger down, and you'll find an example. Is that what made you love the book, or was it something else?

IO: I loved that these kids were murderers. I loved that pirates were killing kids. I loved that this was the sort of thing overprotective parents, principals, and child psychologists would probably be fiercely opposed to, and I love that it all came together to form a really beautifully written story that is perfect for children…and at least this adult.

JJ: You once described writers as grown ups who still play with imaginary friends. What did you mean by this?

IO: I don't like meeting writers that I'm a fan of. Writer colleagues are different because you get to know them on deeper levels. But I would never want to meet the writers of the books I loved growing up because if they were dicks it would end my relationship with those books. What this means is that I am all for the celebration of a book, but not its author.

JJ: So the weird thing in what you're saying is that we should separate an author's life from her work, but that you, personally, would have a tough time doing this if you met the author and they were a jerk to you. Am I reading that correctly?

IO: Yes. If I met a writer and he or she were an asshole it would greatly prejudice my reading of their work.

What being an author really boils down to is an adult who plays with imaginary friends. These friends are the characters in the stories you are working on, and they have a real way of affecting your social life and compromising your personal relationships because, as you're working on their stories, they tend to chatter away in your head. And their actions, which occur entirely in your head, are a cause of concern until they hit the page or until the final editing of their actions is complete.

Though I think a mature writer won't let their characters affect them too much, or to be more direct, the fact that you are a writer and working on stuff doesn't give you licence to be an asshole to friends and family. My imaginary friends right now are the characters in the manuscript I'm working on.

JJ: When I was a kid, I had like a couple hundred different toys of plastic knights and mutant turtles and transformers and metal cars etc, etc, and I would spend hours in my room making up different scenarios for them, almost all of which involved a lot of dialogue, allegiance shifting, betrayal, and massive battles.

And I find that my first book, The Towers, is in many ways a (ever so slightly) more sophisticated version of this playing. And there were many times, over the course of writing it, that my wife had to pull me back, gently, from these worlds, and the fake conversations I was having in them. Having something useful to do outside of writing, which for me is prayer and church and service, keeps me more sane and less of a jerk than I would otherwise be.

IO: There is no reason to be a bastard to anyone. That's what it comes down to. The writing process invites a cast of all sorts of individuals into your head. If we didn't have the means to write down their actions, or if writing fiction were not culturally accepted, we would surely be admitted to hospitals. It's up to the writer to be in control of the traffic inside their head and not take it out on those around them when their time with them is interrupted. In other words, being a temperamental writer who lashes out at those around you when they get in the way of your writing doesn't make you interesting. It just makes you an asshole.

JJ: Let's talk a little bit about your column specifically. Why did you decide to include images in your column? Is that something you do a lot in your work?

IO: This column was so accidental and a direct result of just being out for walks on slow days out there in the world with a camera. I've never considered myself a photographer or a photo-essayist and by not doing so, I think I was able to exercise some fun with the genre. The essays you see in McSweeney's are exactly that. Some of the things are true, some are fabrications. But at the end of the essay, hopefully some kind of truth emerges.

JJ: This is one of those areas that I feel like a lot of people who are not writers are confused by. I don't know if this was important in Canada, but there was a massive poop-storm in the US over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, where basically people found out that some of the stuff he wrote didn't actually happen. Oprah gave him a scolding. Yet this is something that every person who has ever written a memoir (or life writing, or whatever you want to call it) does. You take elements of real things and blend them with fiction, or exaggerate certain details, to get to something from which, as you say, some kind of truth emerges.

Sometimes I think the outrage over it was simply because people thought they were being lied to and manipulated. Like maybe if Frey had just put "A Mostly True Memoir" on his book cover, everyone would love him still. This is another one of those situations where labeling makes a big impact on how a work is perceived and consumed.

IO: Well, that's genre for you. It's sort of the contract that writers make with the reader. If you tell someone that this is a true story, and it turns out not to be, then it makes you a liar. Embellishment is obviously that grey line between bullshit and the truth. I would prefer not to think of my columns with McSweeney's as walking that grey line without the disappointed audience. Sort of like if Peter Pan were a photojournalist, this might be what you got. Maybe that's a poor description.

JJ: Let's say that somebody you loved was going to enter the McSweeney's column contest next year. What advice would you give them?

IO: Just press send. And maybe field test the column a bit. Actually, always get feedback. Always.

JJ: When you're not working on your column, what do you do? (In terms of work and leisure, that is. Do you have other projects or do you work a day job or moonlight as a jazz pianist, etc?)

IO: I do a lot of small things. I teach and I study. I walk and I nap. I'm learning German, but I'm not sure if that falls into work or leisure. I'm working on another book, and today I spent the day sewing pants for a great suit I found at a second hand shop. Other than that, minor explorations are kind of my expertise.

JJ: So how's Berlin?

IO: I love Berlin, though I am very much off the radar of the oohs and aahhs of Berlin. I have almost no community and almost no friends here which is the opposite of what things were like when I lived in Montreal. I have some park benches, there's a pub I go to once in a while where they know my name, and there are a couple of great English bookstores where they also know my name. If I had to count the people that know me in Berlin outside of my workplace, there are the two people who work at the two bookshops, a bartender, and my friend Arjun. But I see these people probably less than once a month. It's hermetic but I like it.

JJ: So how'd you end up there?

IO: Love, Jordan.

JJ: Ah… The best reason to do anything.

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You can find out more about Ian Orti at his website ianorti.com or at The Barnstormer, an online literary sports magazine that Orti co-founded.

Dear Mother,

There's a document in my Google Drive that I wrote about nine or ten months ago, when I was trying to decide what to do with my website. I titled it "Website Thunder Brain" because I like to be different, and this sounded cooler to me than "Website Brainstorm." It's basically a list of ideas for my website, this light-gray masterpiece that is jordanjeffers.com. Here's a direct quote from part of it:

Blog content should be mostly non-topical, humorous work, in the following order of priority:

1. Fiction - Along the lines of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
2. Nerd appreciation - Thoughts on wizards, books, making friends, and playing games.
3. Christianity - Thoughts on religious life, scripture, and pop culture?
4. Sports - Personal narratives, fun with baseball history, and shameless Cardinals rants

Let's focus on the first item on that list. When I said, "Along the lines of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency", what I really meant was, "Almost identical to McSweeney's Internet Tendency in every way." I basically intended to steal their model as much as possible, focusing on short pieces that smash genres together in different ways. (Stealing other people's ideas, of course, is a writerly tradition that dates back to Shakespeare.) The first two stories I ever wrote for this site -- Letter of recommendation for Ms. Amelia Bedelia and A series of letters to the boy who keeps cutting things off of the Giving Tree -- are pretty classic McSweeney's style stories, though longer than they normally publish.

I never really stopped copying McSweeney's, or "the Tendency" as I like to call it, though much of my work now is a bit less "conceptual," fiction that's closer to being a story than an idea. But I always felt like they had found a niche that was really worth exploring, little ideas that could have a big impact on the way we see little things, like lower back tattoos.

Anyway, this is all behind the scenes sort of stuff, and not particularly interesting. I really just quoted the passage above to show you how much I respect McSweeney's, how much I wanted to emulate them.

And that brings me to a few weeks ago, when the Tendency announced their 5th Annual Column Contest. They do this every year, as you probably picked up on from the word "annual," soliciting columns ideas from random people. The winners all receive a $500 prize and a chance to write for the Tendency for a year. This sounded like something I wanted to do/spend, so I decided to enter. I figured that, at the very least, I could use the opportunity to develop something new for my own site.

It took me about a week and a half to really come up with the topic and write something worth reading, eventually coming back to the third item on that list, "Thoughts on religious life, scripture, and pop culture?" The question mark should tell to you how confident I was about my ability to do this in a way that was both real and humorous at the same time. Writing about religion is dangerous work -- the ground is treacherous and thorny, peppered with land mines and banana peels. It's equally easy to blow yourself up and make yourself look like a fool. Often it's safer to circle around the long way, and try to come at God from an oblique angle.

Then Mr. Robin Thicke and Ms. Miley Cyrus decided to write humorists everywhere a blank check of comedy at the VMAs, and my new column came together around their particular insanity. I called it "Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me," and sent it off like a young child to their first day of school, with a tear, a prayer, and a few shoelaces untied.

A week or so later it came back to me, along with a nice little email from the Tendency informing me that I had not won. [emoticon sad face]

But...[dot dot dot]

I had been honorably mentioned! [emoticon happy face]

Look, you can see my name on the contest results page.

Though this mention comes with no prize money, it does come with much honor and, more importantly, the same chance to write my column for McSweeney's for the next year that the winners get. So starting sometime near the end of September, you'll start to see "Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me," on the Tendency. The columns will all be about pop culture in some way or another, and I'll post links to them on my own site, and tweet them, so you won't miss any.

I'm super excited about this, in a way that's really hard to describe. You know those times when something happens that you can't stop smiling about? This is one of those moments, for me.

Hope you are well and joyful, as I am. Can't wait to see the new baby niece again this weekend! She's going to be so proud of me.

With love always,

Your son Jordan

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Jordan Jeffers writes letters to his mother on the Internet because stamps are a form of witchcraft. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Book review in one tweet

These poems--Hey wait, don't walk away, poetry is good! Seriously. I'm not even kidding. #hello?

Review

I had intended to put up a review of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed today, when I noticed an odd number of Seamus Heaney quotes on Twitter and found that he had passed away. (There is probably a whole essay in that sequence of events somewhere, but not one I want to write today.)

I suspect a lot of people reading this have never heard of Seamus Heaney, or read a single poem of his, and so I'm reviewing my favorite of his collections here, just to convince you that he's worth your time.

About five years ago I was living in Oxford, studying at Pembroke College, and I was completely miserable. I had very few friends, hated the food, and couldn't watch any baseball games. I stayed up many late nights watching old Bulls games on Youtube and the same twenty or so Flight of the Conchords clips. A significant portion of my day was dedicated to following competitive DoTA. One time I was shooting baskets in the park, and I literally wept aloud because a stray dog came up and licked my hand. Add several more pathetic stories to those; you'll probably come up with something close.

In the midst of this homesickness, I was also reading a thousand pages or so per week and writing a bunch of essays. My previous two terms had been spent wading through a massive number of Victorian novels, and so for my final term I took a chance on a course about a Nobel winning Irish poet I'd never heard of before, Seamus Heaney.

I won't over exaggerate, and say that he "changed my life" or anything like that. I was still pretty miserable most of the time. But there were moments reading Heaney when it felt like the top of my head was coming off, and I was seeing the world in a completely different way. And I was seeing words in a totally new way as well. He's one of those writers that make you feel horrible about being a writer, because how could you possibly ever come up with something as beautiful as that?

Electric Light was my favorite of his collections, poems touching on his childhood, the rural electrification of his Irish home, Shakespeare, Virgil, and getting a new suit, among other things. My favorite is "The Fragment," probably not one of his "best" poems by any critical analysis, but I don't care a fig for that and neither should you.

'Light came from the east,' he sang,
'Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see the headlands and buffeted cliffs.
Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already.'

And when their objection was reported to him --
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there--

'Since when,' he asked,
'Are the first and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?'

Isn't that freaking great? Rest in peace, S.H.

Nerd rating

7 wizard staffs (out of 10)

English nerds especially will appreciate the depth of language Heaney uses, the way every word seems to drip and hum with real life. I recommend waiting for a rainy day.

Non-nerd rating

6 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

Poetry tends to scare people away pretty quickly (a fact I blame entirely on people who talk about poetry), but Heaney is basically the Irish Robert Frost. I won't say that you'll love every poem of his, but if you read a whole collection, I guarantee there will be at least one that will stay with you for a long time. A good poem is a lifelong blessing.

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If you like Electric Light, Jordan Jeffers recommends Opened Ground, Heaney's much larger collection of work from 1966 - 1996. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. To Jordan, that is, not to Seamus Heaney. It means more to him than you might think.

Dear Mother,

I've met a lot of people this year. I don't remember most of their names, but I'm confident that I did meet them. There's Baldy-Guy Glasses and New Drummer Boy and Grain Elevator Guy, just to name a few. They're all lovely people, and most of the time I enjoy our conversations. Grain Elevator Guy in particular is super nice.

But there's always something uncomfortable about those initial meetings, something that goes beyond my ability to forget all of their names seconds after I hear them. Because, inevitably, they always ask this question:

"So, what do you do for a living?"

My response to this varies, usually depending on my level of confidence at the time.

1. Low confidence: "Well, right now I'm trying to do freelance writing full time, actually, at least until the end of the year." This one is generally followed by at least 48 seconds of me rambling on about my website, or sending things into magazines, or my plans to self-publish a fantasy novel, or my plans on finding another job after the year of writing is over, until I have to excuse myself because of excess sweating.
2. Moderate Confidence: "I'm freelance writing full time at the moment." My tone of voice strongly hints that this could change at any moment, once I realize the extent of my folly.
3. High Confidence: "Uh, I'm a freelance writer." I always include the 'Uh.' It's shorthand for 'I suspect you're going to think this is weird.'
4. Confidence of a Thousand Lions: "I'm a writer."

As you can see, the less confidence I have at the time, the more words I tend to use. This is a good rule of thumb for a lot of the things I say. Short, simple words are often dangerously transparent. It's much more safe to hide behind complex phrases and dependent clauses, endlessly stitched to one another like patches on a quilt of fear. "Quilt of Fear" is now the title of my next story.

But though I change what I say, I'm always thinking the same thing.

"I mooch off my wife."

Now I do get up, every morning, and fill my digital papers with digital words (and occasionally my real paper with real words), and I am living. But in spite of those two facts, I don't really write for a living. Because for the first nine months of this experience, I did not make one red cent from any of the words I've put to paper, digital or otherwise.

Then, about two weeks ago, I'm standing in line at Fusion Brew, deciding what kind of Chai Tea to get, and my intelligent phone tells me I have electronic mail. It's from Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and it's three sentences long, and it's from the editor there, and he's telling me he likes the story I sent him, he thinks it's a good fit, and he's going to take it.

Wait, what?

I show this to Madelyn, and we just sort of stand there in shock for a second, and forget to order our drinks. I spent the next forty-five minutes frantically Googling this guy's name, trying to make sure he's actually the editor of Analog, that the email address he's sending from is really Analog's address, and that I'm not being elaborately and cruelly tricked. Until the issue actually comes out, and I have a copy in my hand, I think I'll still be worried about that.

Of course I called you later and told you all the details. I was holding off on telling other people until I actually got the contract, but that happened a few days ago, and I mailed it back in, and USPS tells me it got there today, so I think I'm safe to tell everyone now.

There's this thing that happens when you're a writer, this pathology that you develop where you really, really want people to validate you for what you do. Because, let's be honest, I'm not performing surgery here, or building roads, or teaching any children. I'm writing stories about gnomes and Axe body spray.

The conflict between writers and the rest of the world is pretty old, going back to the day Plato threw the poets out of The Republic (That's a gross oversimplification of his argument, but whatever, this is the Internet. You can read Plato's real argument if you want). So there's this deep fear in every writer that when you sit down and pump something out you're wasting your time, that you should be working in a homeless shelter instead of writing something that tries to make people laugh and think and maybe feel something.

So when a complete stranger in charge of a big magazine (big for sci-fi magazines, anyway) tells you that he likes your story and wants to publish it, and not only that, but he wants to pay you for the privilege, you start to feel like king of the world. It doesn't prove that what you are doing is actually worth that money. There's lots of writing out there that's not worth the electronic paper it's not printed on. But it does pay a month's rent with a decent bit to spare.

I'm still not supporting myself with my writing, not yet. But next time someone asks me what I do, I'm pretty sure I'm going to use short, simple words.

All my love to you and Dad and Grandpa and the dog,

Your son Jordan

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Jordan Jeffers writes letters to his mother on the Internet because stamps are a form of witchcraft. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Regular readers of this website (see also: Mother, my) will have noticed a certain silence the last few weeks, as personal and professional considerations have forced me to alter my normally diligent writing and publishing schedule in favor of a more relaxed program. In other words, I've been really busy, and I haven't been writing as many funny stories.

There are lots of different reasons for this, which include, but are not limited to, sickness, travel, weddings, conferences, car batteries, car tires, something called an ETAX system, car shopping, car agonizing, car buying, Gettysburg, the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, a half-marathon, and something I like to call "laziness."

The biggest reason, however, is that I am currently pouring all my creative energy into a novel, and that tends to suck all of the funny stories out of a person. Sorry about that. You can, however, expect a return to our regular publishing schedule (new stories Wednesday, new blog posts Friday, for those of you who don't know) once the first draft of the novel is completed.

[BEGIN PROMOTIONAL LANGUAGE]

I'll also be releasing a "best-of" anthology of funny stories sometime near the beginning of September. This anthology will include updated and expanded versions of some of my most popular stories from the last year, along with a healthy dose of exciting new material, including:

• The adventures of Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, and George R. R. Martin as they try to stop J. K. Rowling from destroying the world!
• The heroic saga of Padrick Pennington, the man who lost everything trying to outlaw the use of Dr. Seuss at high school graduation ceremonies!
• The Way of the Sub: Part II!
• The story of a lowly, nameless stormtrooper, struggling to make a workers compensation claim in the crumbling Galactic Empire!
• Probably something with goblins in it!

If you have an intelligent electronic device of some kind, you'll be able to read it. And you should read it. It will be funny and almost free.

Also, you should read it if you are someone who knows me well enough that it would be kind of awkward if you didn't read it.

Anyways, info on all that will be posted to this website with increasing regularity as the release date approaches. You can also expect all of the completely free words to continue as normal.

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In the meantime, I suggest you catch up on the news, invite a friend to lunch, or visit some of your favorite trees. I will be buried in my computer screen, fiddling with prepositions.

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Jordan Jeffers would like to thank every single person who has read anything he has written and said something nice about it. He would also like to thank every person who has lied about reading something he has written and said something nice about it. It means more to him than you might think.