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Keywords

Matt Mendez, questions and answers

Document Type

Interview

Description

Matt Mendez: I'd first like to thank Spencer [Hyde] for inviting me to come over here. I'm so excited to be here. We're going to do a Q&A first and talk a little bit about MFA programs and short stories and YA novels. We've got YA novelists and future YA novelists in here, short story writers, correct? I do both, and I love both equally. I started writing in 2004 with short stories, and that's essentially the form that I first starting doing and will always be, I think1 my first love. I love writing short stories, I love reading short stories. And even though I do YA now and consider myself a YA novelist and just a novelist essentially, I think short story writing forms a lot of what I do, and I think that, without writing short stories, I wouldn't be able to be a novelist or a YA novelist. I think reading the form and writing the form teaches you such precision, and it teaches you to concentrate on characterization and the moment of clarity; it teaches you to focus on the character, on timing, and just really creating surprise in such a way that it helps me to clarify what i'm doing in the novel. It also teaches you economy. It has taught me economy because I know when I'm reading a short story collection, when I'm reading a short story, there are these moments of surprise that are in short stories that are so powerful that when I'm reading a novel, especially if it's not the best novel, that they're hard to come by. Sometimes I find myself just kind of like treading through a novel, waiting for that kind of moment that I get in short stories all the time. So, when I sit down to write, especially a novel, I find myself reading more short stories because those moments of impact are on every page, almost in every paragraph1 even at the sentence level. I know that if I go back to an MFA program, I would probably want to write a novel as part of my thesis, but I would probably concentrate on reading short stories and look at how short story writers are putting their work together to kind of help me get ready to write a novel, which I think is important for this time, for what you guys are doing, because this moment you're in now is a very special time for writers because you're never going to get this kind of opportunity again where you get to take your work very seriously, and then other people are going to take your work very seriously. You're never going to get this opportunity again where you're going to have this group of people to read your work as thoughtfully, as carefully, again. Because once you graduate and you move out to the world, you'll you have a couple of really close friends that will get to read your work, but they'll have jobs, they'll have their own work, they'll have families and all sorts of other commitments. They'll read your short story, but they won't read it with the same level of scrutiny you would. So, right now is a really special time to concentrate on what you're doing. So, take that time you need while you're working on all your stuff now to read widely, read short stories. If you're a poet, read short stories. If you're not a poet, read tons of poetry. Read creative nonfiction. Read all sorts of stuff that you would never imagine reading. Now is the time to do that. And also, read genre work. Read sci-fi, read horror, read mystery, because there are all sorts of writers doing all sorts of brilliant things that you could learn from. Now is the time to soak up all that stuff to help you write the kind of stories you want to write because there's all sorts of writers doing really interesting work and all sorts of wide genres and all, that'll teach you, that you can learn from.

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