Ledger Extra Qs: Erika Swyler
Author Erika Swyler appeared on the inaugural episode of Ledger and also stopped by my website for a print interview before I officially launched the podcast. She answered the Extra Qs via email!
LEDGER: What are you reading right now?
ERIKA SWYLER: I’ve just started Antoine Wilson’s Mouth to Mouth, and I’m already in love with the way it reads. The writing is gorgeous. Wilson does things with tone and style that play with distance in interesting ways. It feels both present and like a book outside of time.
LEDGER: What are you excited to read soon?
ES: Oh gosh, this is hard because I’m often reading books that haven’t been released. I’m slowly working my way through all the books I bought during the first phase of the pandemic, so I’m excited to get to N.K. Jeminsin’s The City We Became, as it’s at the bottom of my pandemic purchases stack. I’m very excited for other people to get to read Adrienne Celt’s End of the World House, which comes out this April, and Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance, which comes out this fall. I need more people to talk with about these books.
LEDGER: What ways does storytelling impact your everyday life?
ES: As much as I feel like I’m a “lazy” person, I’m also never not writing. There’s constant noise in the back of my mind that’s working on how to fix a scene, or how to write myself out of a plot hole. I’m always listening for good bits of conversation, interesting turns of phrase, and generally just collecting little pieces of the everyday. It’s a strange mix. I’m both a sponge, and a pot simmering away on the stove. A busy brain! I’d also say that in some ways being a storyteller has had the unintended side-effect of making a lot of television less enjoyable. I’m far less forgiving than most people when the writing turns sour. Very rarely can I get through two seasons of any show. Let’s be honest, most of the time I’m out halfway through a season. It’s rough to watch a series with me.
LEDGER: What is something other than a book/writing you are currently obsessed with?
ES: I’m terribly pet obsessed at the moment. I recently got a new rabbit after my previous little old man bunny passed away. It’s been ten or eleven years since I’ve had a baby rabbit, so it’s a trip watching a new little life explore and figure out how to trust. It can take months for a bunny to really warm up to you, so every day is an adventure in being either the worst person alive to this creature or mildly tolerable. My poor friends. I’ve been inundating them with pictures of my bunny. My social media? Nothing but rabbit pictures.
LEDGER: What does your work space look like?
ES: I work from home and tend to wander all over the house. I’m a free-range writer that way. So, right now I’m sprawled across the green sofa that’s in my rabbit’s room (she’s very spoiled), there’s a big white block of a side table to my right that’s got a large bottle of home-fizzed seltzer, and a few feet away there’s a lump of blanket with a rabbit under it. I’m pretty haphazard and casual when writing new words. Comfort is key, so if there’s a couch or a bed or a very squishy chair, I’m in it. When I’m revising I usually work on a treadmill desk. There’s a room in my basement—I call it my writing dungeon—that used to be a pottery studio, and that’s where I keep the treadmill desk, all my piles of paper, and most of my books. I’m lucky to have a space like that, and even luckier to have a desk like that. I find it tongue-in-cheek funny to be on a treadmill while revising and editing. It makes an already mentally masochistic activity even worse. That’s such a novelist mindset.
LEDGER: Whose writing is so good you sometimes wonder if they're a magical being (or it’s good it convinces you they are)?
ES: Just off the top of my head: Kelly Link, Adrienne Celt, Jesmyn Ward, Jason Mott, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Susannah Clarke.
There are more of course. But these are folks who at some point or other have inspired an, “It’s time to give up writing, Swyler,” thought. I have to talk myself down and remember that we all do different things, and every voice has a purpose, even mine. Ultimately, it’s great to be alive and writing in a time with voices that feed you.
LEDGER: Share someone's work here, anything you want others to enjoy! Doesn't have to be writing.
ES: I’d love for more people to read Katherine Dunn’s On Cussing, an excerpt of which can be read here in The Paris Review. I’m terribly foul-mouthed, though far less so in my writing. I think more people should embrace the need for, and art of, a well-placed swear.
I also want to share a piece of ancient internet history that remains unchanged since the days I stumbled across it decades ago: A click-through text adventure game called Brad: The Game. You’re Brad, and things aren’t going well for you. It’s a time capsule of internet weirdness that I’m delighted still exists.