Postcards from a Dead Girl (20 page)

A Conversation with Kirk Farber

So, a book about postcards from a dead girl? What was your inspiration?

My initial inspiration came from a song called “Letters from the Dead” by a Nashville band called The Silver Seas (formerly The Bees). The lyrics are about someone who has found postcards from a past relationship and he doesn't know what to do with them. I was always listening to their whole album, and every time that song came up, my “what if” question would resurface: What if instead of discovering old postcards, they were being sent to you, but you weren't sure if the sender was alive or dead?

One day I sat down to write the first scene of the book (where Sid receives a postcard and suffers the accompanying anxiety-and-lilac spell), and two more scenes immediately followed that same day. The themes of the book naturally developed from there. I didn't set out to write a book about this or that. I just had this main conflict, this character in crisis. But as I wrote, I started exploring things like memory and idealization of the past. And disconnection, especially with language. Sid is always misunderstanding what people say, or hearing them wrong, or not hearing them at all. Often his dog is the only one who understands him.

I was also interested in how we deal with loss and tragedy—how we can put too much emphasis on escaping, or try too hard to be happy when maybe we just need to feel miserable for a while. Most of the people in the story get along just fine in life, yet Sid can't stop flailing. I found a lot of humor in Sid's flailing, though, because we've all done it—hit the brick wall a dozen times before we learn we're
actually supposed to go around it. I figure if you can't laugh at some of the inevitable suffering in life, you might lose your mind.

What was your writing process for this novel?

I knew the beginning and the end before I really got going, so I just had to fill in all that middle part, which took about two years. I started by writing longhand, basically brainstorming, filling up legal pads with thoughts and themes until scenes started to reveal themselves. During that time I wrote up 3x5 index cards with the guts of the scenes. Then I hung a bunch of cork on my wall and tacked all the cards up so I could see the whole book. I liked to see all the story points and character arcs, so I'd have these cards and charts and scribbles all posted on my wall. After a while, my office got to looking like that Russell Crowe movie about the guy with schizophrenia.

A huge part of writing the novel was the rewriting, which I did with the help of my roundtable group at Redbird Studio in Milwaukee. We met every other week for read-alouds and critiques, and their feedback was invaluable. Plus the sense of community really made the lonely part of writing much more tolerable, and the regular sessions motivated me to keep pumping out scenes. If you can find a writing community who are honest and supportive, I highly recommend it. Just knowing other people are “out there” doing this writing thing can be worth your time and the price of admission. Honest, constructive feedback is priceless. Now that I live in Colorado, I'm part of Pikes Peak Writers, which is a great big group that is very active and connected—there is always something going on with PPW.

Do you have any writing rituals?

I tend to write when the world is quiet. Late night is best. I need total silence to hear myself think, and I achieve this by wearing foam earplugs as well as a set of noise reduction earmuffs. I look kind of ridiculous with this gear, but it gets the job done. I can't listen to music while I'm writing because I'll focus on the melody or instruments or lyrics. I'm pretty much a caveman: if I try to do more than one thing at a time, I get frustrated and confused and start grunting at the fireball in the sky.

If the writing isn't going well, I try to remind myself that as long as I sit at my desk long enough, something will get written. One sentence, even. It's kind of a trick for me. Just write one sentence for today, Kirk. And then inevitably more will follow. But if I sit down to write 1,200 words, it's a struggle.

The coolest thing about writing for me is the metaphysical part of it, how one minute you can be staring at a blank piece of paper, and the next you're off in your imagination, or the ether, or whatever you call it, and an hour
later there is a page or a scene written down that didn't exist before. Norman Mailer called writing “the spooky art,” and I agree.

How did
Postcards
find a publisher?

It started with my receiving a phone call on my birthday from literary agent Sandra Bond saying she wanted to sell my manuscript, which was a really great birthday present. After I signed with her in March, I settled in for the big wait of her sending the manuscript out to houses. I assumed it would take six to eight months because publishing is a very slow-moving machine. And I was preparing myself for the inevitable rejections, having gone through that process with short fiction.

But about one month later, Sandra called to let me know someone at HarperCollins was very interested, in fact was already faxing her pages of edits. This person was the estimable Carl Lennertz. He loved what he'd read but had some improvements in mind, so Carl and I worked on editing the book over the summer and fall. After several drafts and passing the muster of several more readers, Harper Perennial made an offer on Election Day. Quite a wonderful day, that one.

Author's Picks

These novels have always stuck with me and really sparked my “you should write a novel” impulses:

Slaughterhouse-Five:
Kurt Vonnegut is one of those writers who totally engages my imagination. Science fiction and literary thriller and satire all wrapped up in one bizarre, beautiful book. This is one of my favorites, as well as his short story collection,
Welcome to the Monkey House.

Fight Club:
Chuck Palahniuk's style knocked me out (ooh, bad pun)—sparse, provocative, and original. So much going on in this book, such a great twist at the end.

The Beach:
Another summer book that swept me away. Alex Garland's take on
Lord of the Flies
was all-consuming for me. This updated paradise-gone-wrong story was totally engrossing.

Misery:
This was the first book I remember not being able to put down. In fact, my boss at my summer job caught me carrying it in my back pocket and yelled at me. I just couldn't stop reading. Other books I love by Stephen King are
The Shining
and
The Dark Half
and
Bag of Bones—
hmm, all books about writers in peril.

A Trip to the Stars:
Nicholas Christopher made me stop reading books for a month after I finished this story about a young boy named Enzo who is separated from his family when he's kidnapped at a planetarium. Intricate and heartfelt as Enzo searches for the people he's lost in his life. You also learn about mysticism, spiders, vampires, celestial navigation, and botany along the way.

The Virgin Suicides:
What a beautiful book. Dark, lyrical, poignant. All good things, from Jeffrey Eugenides. Love this book.

The Great Gatsby:
This is my “classics” pick. I reread this recently after fifteen years and just loved it. I think this Fitzgerald guy has got a future in writing.

In the Lake of the Woods:
Haunting, dreamy, and tragic. A love story and a horror story at the same time. A gracefully written thriller. Tim O'Brien is one of my favorite authors. I think of this book every time I water the plants.

Other writers who do the dreamy, surreal, literary thing I love so much are Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami. I get sucked in to their stories, and it's like a magic trick: I try to figure out how they got me to the end and I can't, but I'm happy to be there.