![]() ![]() Fiction reminds us what it is to be human. Perhaps if I’d encountered the right book at an earlier age I would be able to grapple with OCD and anxiety and depression a bit better-maybe I’d be better prepared for what came next.įiction allows us an opportunity to practice empathy. Then, I set the billows to work on that ember.īut all of this, all my writing, is done because I believe fiction has a way of reminding us what it means to be human, and that things don’t always turn out like we’d expect. I was sitting in bed and had my phone next to me (ideas often hit me late at night, and I always take notes on my phone), and I heard one line: “It’s not that you need to hear it or anything-just that I need to say it.” I often start stories with voice and build everything else around that entity, and this line gave me an ember of Addie’s character. And it’s not hyperbole to say that her voice came to me-one line ran through my mind and I spent the next many months chasing that personality. The story first opened up when Addie’s voice came to me, and I thought of what it might be like to narrate from a female perspective. My focus on dialogue was shaped by playwrights like Sarah Ruhl and novelists like Ali Smith, and I was greatly schooled in characterization by the likes of Annie Proulx. My understanding of a work’s final moment was forever altered when I encountered the final paragraph of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I considered the importance of the first sentence after reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I started thinking of how to rearrange a universe after reading Hamlet followed by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I wondered at the origins of character and their background and motivation after reading Samuel Beckett’s plays and Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. In that sense, I started writing this books years ago, though I didn’t know it at the time. I began from that moment with “Whitewashed walls and medical halls, and memory as told in story,” mimicking his poetic rhythm, and immediately I was in the psych ward and building a world from those words. ![]() ![]() Look at, for example, the first lines of “The Splendor Falls” and you’ll see what I’m talking about. ![]() I often draw inspiration from the movement of poetry. I remember the moment I first encountered the prosody of Frost and the metre of Tennyson. I remember being totally floored after my first reading of The Importance of Being Earnest when I saw Oscar Wilde hit a perfect note one line after another. I’ve strived to maintain that balance ever since (and I’ve always had a penchant for the absurd). When studying in college, I read a lot of Tom Stoppard and was entranced by the way he addressed weighty issues while maintaining a witty, comedic mode. It’s hard to pinpoint a genesis for the story of Waiting for Fitz because it feels like it has been a part of me for so long. He has recently joined the Brigham Young University English Department faculty. Hyde was the winner of the 2015 AML Short Fiction Award for his story “Remainder”. Spencer Hyde is introducing Waiting for Fitz, his debut novel, about two young people suffering from mental illnesses, which is being published by Shadow Mountain next week. ![]()
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