First draft: A dialogue of writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with authors of fiction, nonfiction, essays, and poetry, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First draft celebrates creative writing and the people who work to bring their carefully chosen words into print, as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

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In this episode, Mitzi talks to Abby Geni about her new short story collection, The Body Farm.

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From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin: You seem like a detective in some ways. You follow your lead. It seems like as a writer you just follow what interests you and see where it leads. And then you have this kind of twilight state where you write. How do you teach writing when it’s so instinctive for you?

Abby Geni: Yeah, I really like that question. And I’ve thought about it a lot. I really enjoy teaching for a lot of reasons. I like seeing what my students are doing. I like hearing how they’re thinking, and I like learning how to articulate what I’m doing in my twilight state in a room silently. You know, people say, “How did you structure that?” And I think, “How did I structure that?” You know, people say, “How did you come up with that description?” And I think, “Okay, so how did I do that?” And I’ve come to so many realizations about my own process that I didn’t know I knew. So there’s something about articulating a process that has gone unspoken up until this point. You know, it’s something that I do. I write without paying attention to how I’m writing. And so teaching makes me think about how I did it, and that teaches me something too.

MISTER: What do you say to people who are really interested in writing and maybe going through a similar process but don’t know what to do next? Or do you have something to say?

AG: Well, the first thing I always tell my students is that you are the only one who knows your story and any feedback you get from others is just an idea that you need to try out for yourself first. I think a lot of newer writers and a lot of professional writers get overwhelmed by the feedback and don’t know what to listen to. And I also think one of the most important lessons I’ve had to learn in my life is to listen to my instincts the first time around because so many times when I’m writing I have a strong instinct and then I decide, “I’m not going to follow that, that’s not what I intended.” That doesn’t sound like a good idea. And then, much later in the revision process, I realize, “Okay, we need to go all the way back to that idea that we had so long ago.” And I think it took me a long time to learn this, and I’ll tell my students: A lot of people think revision is some kind of secret garden that you have to know the key to open and only a select few people have ever been there, and you have to study and take classes and learn the terminology to be able to do that. And that’s just not true. We know what a good story is. That’s one of the most basic things about being human, telling a good story and knowing when a story is boring or when a character isn’t fully developed or when the setting doesn’t feel real. So if you can write something and then get enough distance from it to see it with the clarity of a reader, you already have that ability. Revision is just seeing what’s good about the story and what needs to be improved about the story. And you know, you’ve already written the story. So you know how to write and correct different parts of it. You know it’s inside you. We’re all story-telling beings.

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Abby Geni is the author of the novels The Wilderness And The lighthouse keepers and the short story collections The last animal And The Body FarmHer books have been translated into seven languages ​​and have won awards including the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Award. Geni is a lecturer at StoryStudio Chicago and a frequent guest lecturer in fiction at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.