“Write what you want”: a conversation with DeMisty D. Bellinger

Brown Bag Lit co-founder Chloe Yelena Miller interviewed DeMisty D. Bellinger. Here is their conversation:

CYM:

Thank you so much, DeMisty, for being available to talk about your writing. I just finished reading – and very much enjoying - your newest book, the short story collection All Daughters are Awesome Everywhere.

I wanted to talk with you about your writing because I am so struck by your adeptness in moving between genres in your published books (novel, collection of short stories and two poetry collections.) In particular, your attention to language and concision come through both in your poems and your shortest flash stories in this newest collection. In a way, the shortest flash fiction stories in this new book read like bridges between the genres with both their lyricism and story.

In “L’autunno”, the next to last story in All Daughters are Awesome, you introduce a mystery, while swiftly setting a scene balanced between childhood and adulthood, summer fun and grief. Reading this short story reminded me of your prose poem “June 19, 1865,” in your poetry collection Peculiar Heritage. The poem ends with the emancipated “I” is “still walking” at the end as both an individual and a metaphor for history.

 My larger question is two part: How do your ideas begin (an image or phrase or…?) and then how does that beginning find a form? Does a beginning sometimes move from or between a poem to a flash piece or longer story or novel or does it always know its form right away?

DDB:

Ideas for writing comes from many places, but it always leads to an image (and here, I’m using the term image broadly, of course, as in imagery, so all those five senses we learned about in grade school). Still, I’ll often begin with a premise (what if we can witness an enslaved woman being freed in Galveston on that first Juneteenth), or an image (the fallen autumn leaves look so pretty on the lake), or a phrase. I may not start writing it right it away, instead letting the seed of story or poem linger with me until it’s clear what I should do with it.

I admit that it’s a bit different when I decide to write a poem or a story or, if I should ignore subtext and go to nonfiction. I usually start with the genre in mind, but sometimes that doesn’t always work. For instance, I have a poem about Typhoid Mary in my chapbook [Rubbing Elbows] which started off as a failed story. And after many sessions of failed revisions, I tried it as a poem and I thought it worked very well! But for the most part, I know if I want to write a poem or prose.

Lastly, sometimes I play with an idea first in poetry, then in short fiction, then in longform prose. This is the case for my latest novel manuscript.

CYM:

For those who haven’t read it, New to Liberty is a novel in three parts. These three parts could live separately as three short stories, but they are individually and collectively so much more after being read together. Part 1 takes place in 1966, Part 2 in 1947 and Part 3 in 1933. This backwards movement in time informs the earlier sections (which take place later), solidifying the importance of history.

Similarly, the six sections in All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere group the short stories to emphasize themes in the sections. There’s an overall reaching for home and connection through love, race, and family, despite differences, even death. There are dangers – men, animals, self – that lurk beyond and within.

Peculiar Heritage groups poems into four parts with themes like history, music and protest. They come together with the ending of the final poem, “Age of Affirmation” with “and you fall, even more vulnerable / to being awake and aware.” None of the poems – or short stories or novel – shy away from the many awarenesses the characters, most of whom are Black women, could come to.

Which is all to ask, can you talk a little bit about how you decide to order your books? I like the focus on numbered sections to give the reader space to consider the groupings. Were there some poems, short stories or maybe another section or scenes that were left out of the books to help strengthen the ordering? 

DDB:

So much happens in revision! New to Liberty started with chapters oscillating between each woman’s story. Also, it always went from the oldest date to the newest date. It didn’t quite work in that way. And interweaving the women’s stories made the whole book seem too pat, so I separated out each tale. I put it in reverse chronology on a whim and it worked, so I kept it!

For the collection of poems Peculiar Heritage, I tried to stay in chronological order. I wanted to move from American slavery to present day and hope, even though I was writing against the fascistic ideas from the White House when I composed that book in 2017. Initially, I didn’t start with the titular poem. The poem wasn’t even called “Peculiar Heritage”! And because the poem is so harsh, it was somewhat hidden in the initial lineup. Then I read Amber Sparks’ short essay “How NOT to Put Together a Short Story Collection” in HTML Giant . Although these weren’t stories, I took her advice, for the most part. “DO NOT save the best for last. Save the best for first,” she writes. Honestly, I thought “Peculiar Heritage” was painful but powerful, and grounded the book for readers.

For All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere, after some back and forth from Timothy Schaffert and SJ Sindu, series editors, I realized that I needed to shape the work into a cohesive collection. It is not a novel-in-short-stories, but the stories are thematically connected. Sort of. I took an afternoon and really thought about the stories, rereading the book, then divided it up in the sections in the published version. Also, I pulled quotes from songs and other works of lit to use as keys to the readers, so they may know what to expect in each section.

I can’t stress how much work happens in revision!

 CYM:

While I haven’t mentioned specifically your poetry chapbook, Rubbing Elbows yet, I wanted to include it in this question. When I look at your four books from four different presses, I’m struck by the three African American women’s faces and the African American girl(s)’ braids on these beautiful and colorful covers. I love how the four books visually connect in this way.

 Since our readers are often writers, I wanted to ask you about the process for the cover designs and how this happened and if this was a goal?

DDB:

I published Rubbing Elbows with Finishing Line Press, which offers the author to find a cover (I don’t know if this is still the case). I am very lucky in that I have lots of friends who are visual artists, and I asked an old friend who is one of the best artists I know for a cover. Cherise chose a painting that she was working on and let me use it. I insisted on paying her, but it was not enough! She donated it. I always think if I ever get very rich (ha!), I’ll buy some of her pieces.

The other presses I worked with—Mason Jar Press, Unnamed Press, and the University of Nebraska Press—each had designers on staff. They were all equally good at working with me to find a cover that I liked. After answering a questionnaire with each press, I was given examples of potential covers. Nebraska gave me on example and I jumped at it. It was perfect for me! I mean, the braids even look like my braids with my split-ends.

Picking a cover is fun but serious work. We can always say it’s what’s inside that counts, but at bookstores and libraries, we wouldn’t be worried about the inside if we didn’t notice the outside! Of course that’s not always true, but true enough. It has truthiness. It’s better than post-truth.

CYM:

When we met at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2012, you were a new-ish mother of twins. I was not yet a mother, but I watched you talk about your daughters and felt so encouraged by your love and success at balancing leaving them for a short period with that love.  

I particularly enjoyed the presence of children, especially daughters, in this new collection. The title story, “Awesome Everywhere,” has a line that is the book title. I love the final paragraph that has the line, “Everyone and everything has something worthy of wonder and fear, of glory.” Your writing allows your characters to witness and experience these extremes, as they exist in life.

I appreciate this sense of wholeness in your writing. When I taught – and you kindly visited my class to discuss – New to Liberty at American University, the students were most drawn to the complicated female characters throughout the three eras. Your writing gender and race must build upon your lived experience as a woman, African American, mother, daughter and more.

In workshops, we’re told to both “write what you know” and “write what you want to know.” If you could leave us a final thought or two about writing what you do know through experience – as well as what you witness or research – what advice might you give writers?

DDB:

The first piece of advice I give all writers is to be a reader. Read within your genre and outside of it, and read the uninteresting stuff. Stay away from AI “written” things because they are derivative and poorly composed. Try to read like a writer. Study the composition of sentences, the cadences of lines in verse and prose. And if a sentence, line, or idea gives you pause, then pause. Think about what caught you in that moment.

I truly think good writers are excellent readers.

The second piece of advice is to not write every day, unless you want to do that. Unless you have to. Write when you want to and don’t stress about it. Have fun when writing. I don’t ever feel like writing is a chore or work. If you start feeling that your writing is a burden, stop. Go for a walk. Play Zelda or something.

Revision, however, is work. But it’s fun work!

Lastly, write what you want and don’t worry about placing the work until you get it done. Don't let conventions dictate what kind of story, poem, or essay you write. Don't confine yourself before you begin. Only worry about the writing when you are finished with a draft. Ideally, when you are finished with a second or third draft. I think the hardest thing to do is write with an imaginary audience of one or more over your shoulder. First, write what you want to write, then find that audience.