Talking with the flash fiction writer turned novelist about her debut book.

by Joanna Demkiewicz

Lindsay Hunter’s first novel, “Ugly Girls,” is out tomorrow–a stunning debut in the novel realm and surprising in the same way a rabbit’s bite makes you recoil and think, “I was not expecting that.” Hunter approached writing the book by employing her flash fiction tricks–her previous flash fiction collections are “Daddy’s” and “Don’t Kiss Me”–and she wanted readers to be just as surprised as she was when the plot takes a twist.

We talked about some of those twists–spoilers ahead–as well as how beautiful ugly can be and how digital media dictates our everyday narrative. In this Salon mashup of fall authors and their books, Hunter says “Ugly Girls” is about “the assumptions we make and accept as fact,” but I learned it’s about even more than that.

With the company of her two-year-old son in the background, we riffed on the intoxicating yet toxic friendships of women, “girly” book covers and unexplained addictions to really dark things.

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Joanna Demkiewicz: I’m actually so excited to talk to you, but I’m nervous about this interview, because I’m worried about spoilers.

Lindsay Hunter: Yeah, I know. It’s hard to talk about it without talking about certain things in it, but I will try.

JD: Oh, yeah, I’m not worried about you; I’m worried about myself. I’m worried that I’ll keep being like, ‘But this one part–’ But anyway, I’ll do my best to hold back. So let’s get started. I read your interview with The Short Form, and you mentioned that with your flash fiction you start with a sentence and follow it like a road. Is that how you approached writing this novel? Did you have any idea where your characters were going?

LH: Yeah, I didn’t. I definitely approached it exactly like I approached flash fiction writing, because that’s the only thing I felt comfortable doing, or that I had confidence in, or that I knew I had fun doing. So that was a big concern – that sort of back and forth in my head–like, ‘Okay, I’m working on a novel, I’m working on a novel,’ because that’s what sells in this day and age…sort of fighting with myself, like, ‘Well, do I feel pressure to write a novel because that’s what’ll get me my book deal? Do I feel like I actually want to write a novel? Do I have a novel in me? How would I even write a novel, and make it exciting to me and make it something I believe in?’

And I don’t know if this is true, but it feels like ‘capital-N’ novelists have it in them, it’s just like that’s their form, that’s something they’re comfortable with, and that’s the way their brain works in terms of figuring plot out and metaphor and all that stuff. It felt like that wasn’t the kind of brain that I have–that illusion of the ‘capital-N” novelist being corporate about it in some way.

But anyway, I had to approach it like, ‘How can I do this?’ I gave myself a word-count goal every day. I had to write 2000-2500 words a day. As I wrote, it became clear that I wanted to write these other perspectives and present the narrative in a series of vignettes, which sort of feels like writing flash fiction to me. That’s how I approached it, because it felt like something I could do and something I could have fun with and be excited by. Because I was really concerned about ‘going to the desk,’ and torturing myself, and thus, torturing the reader. I wanted it to be entertaining on every level.

JD: The fact that you turned your preferred form into a novel made it so interesting to read. Just like you said, you were presenting these characters in vignettes, so yeah, sometimes we get the same scene, but it’s from a different perspective. That created so much tension that maybe wouldn’t have been there if you had forced yourself to be like, ‘Okay, let me just write a novel the way everyone else is.’

LH: Yeah, like what I assumed people were doing. I know that a lot of novelists have outlines and they know where it’s going to go, and that’s their process. I think every writer, including myself, makes the same mistake. You make assumptions on how to do something, and then you try to do it that way, and it doesn’t fit with who you are or what you’re trying to do, and you feel like a failure. I feel like that’s true for every stage of my writing life. I tried to do what I thought people did, and then I failed, hated myself, and then decided to do it the way that I could do it.

JD: I was going to ask this question a little later–it’s one of my spoiler moments. I’ve literally read the last chapter–it’s only two pages–more than 20 times, because it’s totally mesmerizing and it brought a lot of elements full-circle. When writing that particular section, did you know it was the end?

LH: I think right before that, I knew…When Baby Girl–this is definitely a spoiler alert–when Baby Girl and Charles have their final altercation, she decides to get a knife and go to Perry’s trailer, that’s when I knew what was going to happen. Initially, I didn’t know how it was going to happen. But I knew that it had to end with Baby Girl, and I knew that the ending would call back to the very first paragraph of the novel when they’re in the car that they’ve just stolen. I knew I wanted to give her a final moment of–I just wanted her to be exposed; I wanted her to be her in that final moment: Who she really was, pretenses down, because she doesn’t really have the energy in this moment. I wanted it to be really evocative of why she was the way she was and how she got to where she is. I think it all comes down to what happened with Charles, as well as the girl she’s blossoming into, which is this harsh, purposely ugly girl.

I think I toyed with Perry killing her or Jim killing her…I just really liked the idea of it being almost circumstantial and just sort of meaningless. This woman, who’s totally–the whole novel’s about misinterpretation and misunderstanding and assumption, and this woman has made this assumption that Myra has taken her boy, and she’s the one who ends it all.

JD: Interesting. Going back to the whole process and relating it to your flash fiction, I like to ask people about their writing process in general. Could you give me some insight into what that process is like?

LH: I’m definitely a morning person. When I was writing the novel, I had taken time off work, and I approached it like a 9-to-5. So I would get up in the morning and I would shower, get dressed and have breakfast, and then I would go to my desk and work. Because I was working on a timeline–I was pregnant, and I knew that my time was going to shrink a lot. But in general, I try to be really respectful of the fun that I want to have while doing it. Because of that, I don’t go to the desk every single day. Number one, now in my life I don’t have the time to do that. I have a young son, and I’m still working 9-to-5, so I don’t have the time right now. And also, I find that it’s more harmful for me than good.

So my process is basically–I have a story that I need to write, and I give myself a four-hour block. I’m not one that can go sit for half an hour or 20 minutes and just tinker. I need time to get into the headspace. I need time to warm up, stretch and get into it. Then I sit down and usually I stare, and I think, and I check Facebook and Twitter, and I try to get into what I need to write. Usually there’s a line or image in my head that I’m trying to get to. Sometimes I’ll write that line or image down. And once my fingers get into the muscle memory of typing, it tends to become a lot easier. And sometimes the line is really outlandish and isn’t something I keep. Or I’ll write the first paragraph to a totally different story or a scene, and then I’ll realize I don’t have anything else to say or it’s boring, so I open up another document. I try to be intuitive and listen to my instincts as much as possible.

[Hunter’s two-year-old son Parker babbles in the background.]

I wish you could see my son right now. It’s almost like he’s mocking someone, like ‘Oooh, I’m fancy.’ One thing he does is when I’m laughing he’ll be like, “Hahahaha” and really mock me. One of my talents is doing impressions and mimicking, so I celebrate it in him. [To Parker] You know Mommy’s on the phone. Do you want to say hi? No? Okay.

JD: So cute. [Laughs] So, speaking of Facebook…Perception is a major theme in ‘Ugly Girls,’ and the most overt example is the identity that Jamey creates on Facebook to lure Baby Girl and Perry. Right now, we’re living in this world where perception is constantly being manipulated. I wanted to know how important it was to you to include the element of digital media in the story, because it’s definitely an antagonist. It shows how dirty the internet can be.

LH: I was hesitant to include it at first. I didn’t want to say, ‘Perry logged into a social media site,’ but I also didn’t want to say, ‘Perry logged into Facebook,’ because it felt so now. But it’s huge to the narrative, because everyone shapes the narrative of who they are, because you can look at Facebook and get an idea of someone’s life and then you can go experience that life and it’s totally different. The example I think of is new moms posting on Facebook, including me. They post the adorable pictures, they don’t post the crying in the middle of the night, you know, husband snoring – they don’t post the bad stuff. Even in general, people post the cute pictures but don’t talk about the real things. In a way, you’re dictating your own image. And then the way people perceive that is also subjective. So there are all these layers of assumption and identity. I didn’t intend for it to be a novel about social media–and it isn’t–but that is a tool that Perry, Baby Girl and Jamey use to gain and receive power.

JD: What did you pull from to give Jamey–who is the predator–an authentic voice? I’m not an expert of predator’s voices, but it felt so authentic, that I wondered if there were certain things you pulled from in order to make it work.

LH: That’s a good question. I just really–I don’t know who or what I pulled from–but I just really tried to make him as real as possible. I didn’t want him to be one-note; I didn’t want it to just be the token bad guy. He’s a scary person, and what he intended was horrible, and what he had done was horrible, but I just wanted to talk about the circumstances in his life and his inner thoughts and the things that affected him on a day-to-day basis. I tried to make him authentic by approaching him as a person–not apologize for what he had done, but just reveal him as much as I could.

In terms of where I pulled it from, I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never really thought about that before. Initially, when I first sat down to write about him, he was a lot scarier to me. But that was before I decided to write from his perspective. When I started to write him and I felt like I could see him better, he wasn’t as scary–to me, as the writer. I was going to bring him to the quarry and see what would happen, and I kept writing and then suddenly he died. [Laughed]

JD: That’s so interesting to me. From a reader’s perspective, I was not expecting that, just like you were not expecting it.

LH: See, that’s what I want. I wanted to be surprised in the hopes that it would surprise other people.

JD: Where do you think your fondness for ugliness comes from?

LH: Yeah, people ask me about that a lot. For me and the way that I am as a person, and a wife, and a mom, and a daughter, and a sister, I like everything to be out there. I like to say what I’m thinking. If I’m going through something that is shameful or ugly, for like 20 minutes I’ll think to myself, ‘I’m not telling anyone about this.’ And then 20 minutes later, I’ll tell four different people. To me, it’s what makes us human. It’s the interesting part of us. It’s the real part of us.

I went through this phase where I could not get enough of ’48 Hour Mystery’ and ‘Dateline,’ and I could not figure out why I loved these shows. I mean, really terrible things were happening to people. People were disappearing. They were being slaughtered and dismembered, and I could not get enough of it. For years I would watch these shows. I would record them and watch them – this was before I had a child, obviously – and I just kept thinking, ‘I just graduated from grad school and I’m trying to be a writer. Why am I wasting my time watching these shows?’ And I really think it was because I was fascinated with that one moment where people were so human they were almost animalistic, and they made a choice where something horrible happened. And maybe that choice was to hurt someone, and maybe that choice was to not listen to that voice in your head.

Now I feel like I got my fill. I don’t watch those shows anymore. I don’t have that visceral need for them. It just comes down to, you know, ‘Okay, I could write about a sad, middle-aged man going through a crisis and talk about the vanilla ways he gets a boner for his assistant or his student or something.’ Those things happen. But I feel like, let’s go deeper. Let’s talk about other things. I want to talk about the beauty that resides in these other people.

JD: That goes back to what you said about Facebook and how we only post the pretty things, and how dangerous that can be.

LH: Exactly.

JD: So, also in ‘Ugly Girls,’ is the relationship between Baby Girl and Perry. I mean, relationships between girls and women are often described as volatile, and Baby Girl and Perry sometimes internally admit that they don’t like one another. Why does their friendship continue? Why do you think friendships like theirs continue in life?

LH: I think there’s an exchange of power that’s addictive. With Baby Girl and Perry, there’s a constant battle between them about ugliness. Baby Girl talks about how pretty and desirable Perry is. Perry talks about how ugly Baby Girl is, but also how badass she is on the inside. There’s a way in which you can empower each other, because the other person has something that you want, and you have something that the other person admires. There’s a constant tug-of-war between you two, and you’re trading power back and forth, and that can be really intoxicating. It can also be really toxic. With any dysfunctional relationship where you’re still getting something out of it, I think it becomes something that you keep drawing from until you don’t need that anymore. I think they both come to a point where–Perry gets to a point where she doesn’t need it anymore, and Baby Girl gets to a point where she understands that and is hurt enough by it that she needs to do something drastic in order to get that power back.

I think women stay in these relationships in life because of that. I think we also see all sides of a person, and it’s harder for us to write someone off. Maybe I’m just thinking about me. There are people in my life who annoy the shit out of me, but I see other good things about them, so I don’t completely shut them out of my life. I still want to be friends, and I want to help them, but then I walk away going, ‘God, this person is terrible.’ I feel like I see all sides. That’s a generalization, but it seems to be why we stick around.

JD: Your intrigue with fairy tales–what about fairy tales? Is it the wickedness or the lessons? Where do you see the parallels?

LH: To me, fairy tales are incredibly violent. They have this rap of having a moral, but they’re often just really fucked up. They’re our world, but the layer of politeness has been stripped out–I don’t know what the word is…But it’s like our skin has been taken off. Like we’re still exactly who we are, but we’re walking around with our muscles exposed. To me, it’s telling this moral tale, and at the end, you’re supposed to be like, ‘Well, that girl should have loved her mother.’ But it’s really just like, no that was really fucked up. I kind of wanted to write that. It initially started with Perry, and then it evolved from there. That’s where the fairy tale came from, and I tried to stay on that trajectory, like, ‘Hey, man, anything goes.’ Sure, there’s a moral, but this shit still happens. To me, they’re just shocking stories, surreal and weird and just a little off, and hyper-real in some way.

JD: And placing them in a location that is so class-oriented–was that purposeful? Do you think stories about class are underrepresented?

LH: I don’t know if they’re underrepresented, but in terms of like–what’s on the best seller list. It’s going to be about a white dude or a white lady who is sad and then did something. They’re generally middle-class to upper-middle-class stories. I was talking about this the other day. Often, it feels like a writer is correcting mistakes in his or her own life. Like, ‘Clearly this character in this book is you. Like this woman is so beautiful and smart and has a deeper understanding of the world and that’s why she’s so melancholy, and let’s explore this tale.’ Everything I write is about people who live in this kind of circumstance where you’re poor. And when you’re poor and constantly surrounded by ugliness, it puts stress on a life that you’re not going to see in this upper-middle-class, intellectual tale.

Again, I’m generalizing; there are so many books that are wonderful and there’s life and humanity in them, but to me, I’m interested–I feel like often people glaze over when talking about people in this circumstance, and they don’t look deeper. I did an interview where my friend interviewed me, and she sent me photos a photographer had taken in a trailer park. To me, it felt like she was trying to show the trailer park as a freak show. That is the opposite of what I was trying to do. I don’t want people to think that people living in trailer parks are freaks. I wanted it to be a home. Everybody tries to make a home. I just want to talk about these people, because they are people, and they are interesting, and they have a different kind of stress and pressure in life that should be examined. That’s my draw.

JD: I think–also a generalization–there’s a lot of pressure to ensure the reader feels some sort of relation to a character. But what you’ve shown is that relation doesn’t have to be so shallow.

LH: Exactly. Another thing I hope people accept is, yes, you can relate to these people when they are exposing their humanity to you, or when they are thinking about an important moment in their lives, but also I hope that you can relate to them when they’re not being relatable, when they’re not being likable, and when they’re being rough. I would hope it would be–there’s all this talk about unlikable characters, especially with women, so I would hope there’s some sort of allowance for that. Even if you don’t relate to it in terms of what you appreciate or admire or agree with, you relate to it because it’s like, ‘I have a spectrum of likability in my own life.’ Like, ‘I can relate to it in moments that I’ve been ugly or I’ve done something that I regret.’ I would hope that’s what people can take away from it.

JD: The character of class adds another element…Everyone has issues, and it doesn’t matter how privileged you are, but if you’re living in middle- to upper-class circumstances, you might have the resources to hide them better.

LH: Right, or get help with them.

JD: Right, get help with them or conceal them. This location of the trailer park–everyone lives so close, and I thought the proximity was interesting, because it was a challenge for the characters hiding their issues. Especially with Myra and her drinking. 

LH: I think for her–hearing life going on around her when she’s seeking oblivion is sort of an annoyance and maybe drives her to her beers. For Jim, it’s an onslaught. He’s never alone, except for when he’s driving to and from work, but even then, he’s driving toward somewhere he’s not excited about. In a way, you’re never alone, but also, you’re never alone. You just hear–I can remember before I moved to Chicago and after I graduated from college, when you’re in that limbo trying to figure out what you’re going to do…I remember I would take a lot of naps. Hearing people mow their lawn would make me feel like such a loser, and so trapped, and so like, ‘I’m never going to figure this out. That guy’s out there mowing his lawn, and I can’t even do that.’ It can just make you feel like, ‘Oh, God, I’m doomed.’

JD: I’ve had that same feeling. Mowing the lawn is so productive, that you’re like, ‘God, I suck.’ Earlier, when you were talking about ‘Dateline’–now that you’re not really into it anymore, what about media and news stories still inspire you? What are you obsessed with right now?

LH: That’s a good question. I feel like I’m in another limbo right now. In the past four years, I’ve had three books come out, which is amazing, but it’s also like, ‘Whoa.’ And becoming a mom changes everything in wonderful and weird ways. I don’t know that I’m obsessing over–the most recent thing I got obsessed over was ‘Outlander.’ [Laughs] That was just because I really liked the trope–the idea that it feels like a romance novel, but it’s also really dark in places and fucked up, and it goes there in a lot of places. I find myself thinking about it again and again. It’s this really feminine, love story thing, but also it gets really dark. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, but I don’t know why. I was actually going to ask–I was supposed to interview Roxane Gay tomorrow, but she had to cancel because she broke her ankle. But she’s really obsessed with ‘Law and Order: SVU’ and I was going to ask, like let’s talk about why we’re obsessed with these shows, and then maybe she could tell me the answer.

JD: Maybe we’re not supposed to know the answer. There’s some sort of pleasure that comes from being obsessed with something. I’d rather be obsessed with a horrible show than with drugs.

LH: [Laughs] I come from a family that has addictive personalities, and my addictions tend to be stuff like that. That and weird candy, as opposed to other substances. So I’m really glad about that.

JD: I read that you considered publishing under the name L.D. Hunter, and I’m glad you didn’t.

LH: Me, too.

JD: The cover of ‘Ugly Girls’ is a picture of a girl’s face and there are a lot of pinks and reds. I would love to give this book to everyone I know and ask them what they think it’s about, because it’s nothing like what you think. Again, it’s about perception. Even the cover is about perception.

LH:  With ‘Don’t Kiss Me,’ my editor was saying–on the cover the ‘I’ in ‘kiss’ is lipstick–and my editor was like, ‘I’m kind of worried about this, because I’m worried a guy would see the lipstick and think it’s not for him.’ That’s why the lettering is kind of metal, rockstar lettering, because it’s supposed to counteract that. But I was like, ‘Well, I don’t want some dummy who sees lipstick and decides not to read the book to read it anyway.’ That’s how I feel about ‘Ugly Girls,’ which is even more in-your-face, like you were saying. There’s more pink, and there’s nails and eyes–even more like, ‘I am a book about women written by a woman.’ I often feel like I have to say, ‘No, there’s something for everyone.’ But I also feel like why do I have to say that? Like, figure it out for yourself. Take a risk, man. You might like it. You might hate it. But step away from the initial, ‘Oh, there’s a woman on the cover.’

JD: I can’t wait until we get to the point where we’re past that gender dynamic, and we’re thinking about other things.

LH: Yeah, I don’t think we’ll be alive. [Laughs]

JD: No, I don’t think so, either. But that’s what our children will talk about. Okay, one final thought: What’s on your bedstand right now?

LH: I just finished reading ‘Women,’ by Chloe Caldwell, and–I’ve been reading a bunch of memoir-fiction hybrids lately, like Luke Goebel’s ’14 Stories: None of Them Are Yours,’ where they feel like diary entries but some of it is fictional, you know, some of it is fantastical. It’s really interesting to me, because my first instinct is like, ‘Oh, goddamnit, you’re just writing in your journal.’ And my second instinct is that it’s really fascinating; it’s interesting where they took the chance to switch to fiction. It feels like the writer becoming part of the story, written by the writer. [Laughs] Which is really cool. Endings are really important to me. I really thought the ending to ‘Women’ was really well done. I think it ended on fiction, although I’m not really sure. Right now, I have an advanced copy of Laura van der Berg’s ‘Find Me,’ which doesn’t come out until spring. I’m only 30 pages in, but I cannot stop thinking about it. I can’t wait to go back to it. I think that’s going to get all the awards. She’s a master.

JD: Cool. So what’s next for you? Do you feel like you need a break, or are you ready to move on to a new project?

LH: I’ve taken a break from writing. My novel was pretty much completed by the time my son came around. Mainly what I did for the past year and a half was edit my novel, and I wrote an essay, but I feel like I’ve taken a break. I need to get back. I have a few ideas, like another novel or a screenplay, and I’m hoping early next year to take some time off work and work on those things.