The Truth About Fiction

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RM: Who is this readership you envision?

MT: It isn't specific. I don't imagine certain people or a certain demographic or anything like that. I'm really just imagining a projection of my own self. I would like to write something that I would like to read. I have my own standards. I know what I enjoy. I know what I feel moved and inspired by. That's what I am looking towards writing.

RM: The heavy, serious situations you write about are often infused with humor. Why is humor important to you?

MT: I just think it's important for life. I think most people go through really heavy things in their lives, and if you don't have a sense of humor to help you through it, your life is going to be heavy and not so pleasant. I don't necessarily try to put humor into things when I am writing about heavy stuff. I also think it's important to not make a joke of things, to let a heavy situation be heavy if it needs to be. But sometimes a joke or something absurd is just there, and it's so apparent to me that there's this absurdity that's also happening, and I just include it because that's just how I am seeing it.

RM: How does place inform your writing?

MT: I think place is everything. There is that whole idea that all the stories have been written, and we're just rewriting and rewriting them, and that might be true, but I think that the landscape that the stories have in them makes a story that has been told before totally different because it is happening in a time and in a place that looks different and feels different. There are different implications about things depending on where the story is located. And plus, I just get really inspired by places.

RM: Do you consider your work to be political? What impact do you hope your work will have socially or culturally?

MT: I think it is too much for a writer to think like that. Let me just say that it is too much for me to think like that. If people feel politically inspired, I think that that's awesome. I think that sometimes if you are dispelling myths or telling stories that haven't ever been told or have been told incorrectly and you're doing something to correct that, I think that can be really political. But overall, I think that as a writer, it's your job to tell the truth. And if you are able to tell a truth that hasn't been told before, and that actually changes the way people think about other people and about the world, then you're super lucky and that's really, really amazing. I think it's a little dangerous for a writer to set out to write something that is [political], you know, as far as fiction or poetry and things like that, it can be a little dangerous, because you don't want to compromise your work. You need to make sure that the art is first. I feel like within that there's lots of space to be political and have a political impact, but I think you need to just cross your fingers and do your best and hope that it's a by-product of your effort rather than the primary intent.

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