Erin Flanagan
Come With Me
DOSSIER: You typically don’t plot out your books in great detail before writing, but COME WITH ME was different. Now, with its success, are you going to try plotting more or going back to flying by the seat of your pants? Just to be clear, you really seem like a total “pantser!”
FLANAGAN: I have always thought of myself as a pantser, but I think what I really am is a reviser. No matter what I do—plotting or pantsing—it seems that’s where the majority of the work is for me.
I remember reading Stephen King’s ON WRITING where he talks about finding books like buried space crafts and his job is to unearth them—sometimes with a jack hammer and sometimes with a fine pick and a brush.
I was so jealous reading that. His way just sounds so much more efficient! For me, it’s like spinning clay. First I think the book is a bowl, then it wants to be a vase. And then a coffee mug, and then a plate. Finally, I hope it just decides and we can be done.
CWM was the first time I pitched a book before writing it, and in order to do that, I really had to believe it was a book, just one I hadn’t written yet. And moreso, I had to convince someone else of that. So I plotted it all out in a lot of detail so I could really see it, and that worked, but only to an extent. When I actually wrote it, it still changed dramatically—major characters slashed, a whole new structure, an entire secondary storyline cut, a timeline added. So the majority of the work still came in revision—76% of the work of it to be exact. The first draft took me 88 hours, and the whole book was 366 before copyedits. I could go on and on about what tracking this data has taught me about my writing process but I’ll spare you.
DOSSIER: CWM explores a deep friendship between two women that goes wonky, and we’ll leave it at that. Why do you think women can become besties after two cosmos, but guys can run into a life-long bro at a COSTCO and just grunt, head nod, fist bump and keep going?
FLANAGAN: First off, I think we need to talk about the men’s jeans at Costco. Years ago, they sold these jeans that were great—not trying too hard to be cool, not old-man jeans, the perfect shade of denim—and then they switched to like a Lee’s knock-off, and honestly, my husband still hasn’t recovered. So when he’s there, he’s not so much fist bumping as he is mourning.
But for women and Costco, it’s like a giddy rush of love. The free snacks! The rotisserie chicken for $4.99! The bulk wine! The wide aisles! You can get everything from prescription glasses to a tuxedo cake. It’s all the possibility. Same with a new friend.
I don’t want to gender stereotype, but I think the paradigms we often see applied to romance apply to friendships as well. Women fall quickly and are giddy in love, and want nothing but to think about and be with the person they’ve fallen for. Men appear more reserved and aren’t as communicative.
So imagine instead of a romance between a man and a woman, a friendship where its two women who are willing to show their feelings and confess their love and want to dissect everything they see and feel. My god, in a way, it’s heaven! But it’s also A LOT. When I was single, I played so many stupid games with men around when to text, when to let them know I wanted to be exclusive, not showing how much I thought about them. But with a friendship, you can meet a woman and then call her on the way home to say you saw another woman in a cute blouse and do you think we need to go shopping?
And yes, I totally recognize these are cliches, but these are also my experiences.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? Music, silence, or the backroom of the Shit Erin Likes Store? (Thank you, David Temple!)
FLANAGAN: I am obsessed with the Shit Erin Likes store idea, filled with all the things I’m currently obsessed with. Although now that I think about it, that might just be Costco.
As for where I write, I’ve found it really depends on where I am in a project. If it’s a first draft, I want to be in public writing either at the library or the coffee shop. I am very outwardly motivated and a people-pleaser, so I like to imagine all those people are impressed with how hard I’m working and with my concentration, while in reality, they aren’t watching me at all.
But this way too I can’t wander off to distract myself because I don’t want to abandon my seat, and also I can reward myself with treats every 500 words as necessary. My favorite thing at my public library is the water dispenser. I am delighted by that free water to no end. Also, there’s always some weird shit going down. My friend Christina and I were there the other day, and when she was walking to the bathroom she saw these two teenage boys run past and dump a cup of ice on this poor woman. Like, what the hell? She came back and told me this and I was like, “I know this isn’t the point of this story, but do you think they have free ice, too?”
So, in public for drafts. But if I’m trying to organize a mess that already exists, I like to do that at home where I can spread out with my serial killer wall and really see what I’m dealing with. Once I know I have everything in the right place and I’m tightening scenes and language, I could do this in the middle of a war zone. This is the only time in writing where I can absolutely lose myself and be amazed three hours have flown by. It’s my absolute favorite.
DOSSIER: As an English professor at Wright State University (go Raiders!), you probably talk to a lot of students who want to know how to win an Edgar Award for Best First Novel like you did for DEER SEASON, but don’t they really just want to know the one colleague at Wright State who you don’t like? Is it the mascot?
FLANAGAN: I was just laughing with another professor that our students somehow are simultaneously interested in our lives like we’re some big mystery and also don’t see us as people. For the most part, the Edgar doesn’t mean shit to them. We can get halfway through the semester and one of them will be like, so do you write too? And others will be coming up and asking why I switched my water bottle all of the sudden after using a different one for weeks (because they’re seasonal, duh). It’s so bizarre.
What I try to remember when I’m teaching is that this is about them and not me. My experience and accomplishments are only of interest as far as what I have to share with them. They don’t want to know what it was like to write the book that won an Edgar (answer: a total nightmare, like every book); they want to know what I learned from that experience that will help them write their book.
Teaching in many ways is the most humbling honor I’ve ever had. I love those little weirdos so much and we pass through each others’ lives in ways that are really important, but we have very different experiences of those interactions. I hope that when they look back in ten years they’ll remember me as someone who told them they could do this. I want to be the cheerleader that sits on their shoulder the rest of their writing lives.
As for the one colleague I don’t like, the true answer is that it rotates. But I can guarantee you, and I think every academic can back me up, there is always one person who is pissing me off, and 98% of the time they have no idea. And I like to think that right now, I’m that person to someone else.
DOSSIER: Besides dealing with a huge book launch and traveling around the country to meet your adoring fans at writer’s conferences, what are you into right now that really makes you want to do a shoulder shimmy? A particular book, a show your watching, a new bestie, what?
FLANAGAN: Lol, I laugh to think anyone thinks that’s what my life looks like. My book launched yesterday and I had diarrhea for six hours.
But! You are right that I am always up for a shoulder shimmy and something that makes me happy. My husband says two of my best qualities are that I’m open to delight every day, and that I am a very easy person to make happy. I’m anxious as fuck just like most people, but my baseline is to be happy, and if I’m at all crabby, my whole day can be turned around by petting a dog on the street. Good bread for a sammy? Happy! Heard an old song I love? Happy! New favorite notebook? Happy! It’s kind of ridiculous.
Right now, my dopamine hits are coming from:
- One of the best reading streaks of my life: Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, Alex Marwood’s The Island of Lost Girls, Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You, Sharon Short’s Trouble Island (out next year), Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, and S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed to name a few. Seriously—streak of my life!
- Green Room 6×8 notebooks from Target that I buy in tandem with my sister so we can have matchies.
- Brioche buns and pecan chicken salad from Dorothy Lane Market (Dayton OH only)
- Watching bag-packing videos on IG. I could do this for hours, and I have.
- Fall is coming!
- A powerpoint I’m making for my daughter on why she should love Keanu Reeves
- NYT recipes, particularly vegetarian and baking
Website: Erin Flanagan | Amazon author page
Jeff Circle 