This week our fiction team is featuring a new short fiction story by American writer Simone Martel, titled 'Scattered'. The full story can be read here on our website.
Simone Martel is the author of a novel, A Cat Came Back, a memoir, The Expectant Gardener, and a story collection, Exile’s Garden. She was born in Oakland, California. After studying English at U.C. Berkeley, Simone created and operated an organic tomato farm in the Central Valley. She’s working on a new novel based on that experience.
Recently the writer spoke with Mina El Attar - one of our fiction editors - about her new story, how she writes her way through the world, and how novel writing and story writing differ. This is a transcript of their conversation.
Mina El Attar: Which parts of the story flowed naturally, and which were more challenging to write?
Simone Martel: The basic concept of the story came quickly, soon after my mother’s death from cancer. I wrote an early draft in the voice of a woman whose ashes have been scattered in her beloved garden. Designing and tending her garden was very important to my mother, and my father continues to maintain it as a tribute to her. Describing her plants and the changing seasons was simple for me, my own tribute, in a way. And, with my parents in mind, I came up with the idea that the couple in the story can have a continuing relationship in the place the woman created and loved.
The challenge came as the story evolved into a dialogue occurring in the bereaved partner’s mind, imagining what she would say. Too much background material would skew the narrative, losing the momentum of the story. Too little and these two personalities and their relationship wouldn’t come to life. I also wanted to keep the story rooted in the reality of the garden. Finding that balance was tricky.
Mina El Attar: How do you decide which of your ideas will stay as short stories and which will expand into full novels, like your novel A Cat Came Back?
Simone Martel: For me, stories and novels require different approaches. Partly the choice is pragmatic. I only began writing short stories after my son was born, mostly because I hadn’t the energy or attention—or time!—for bigger projects. Short stories became a way to experiment with form and improve my craft. My stories often start with an observation, a thought experiment or situation, growing out of a narrow sort of what if, toward a clear resolution.
With novels I can explore themes in a more complex way with time playing a significant role in the narrative. My first novel, A Cat Came Back, covers a year in a woman’s life after a freak accident traps her in a cat’s body. Accumulating details over time helps build the claustrophobia of a self-aware being treated like a cute dumb animal, stuck in a false identity, slowly losing her humanity. The novel I’ve just finished, Zarzamora, follows four seasons on an organic tomato farm. This book has a wider focus than A Cat Came Back, chronicling a rural California community struggling with economic and environmental change. Interweaving the diverse perspectives of farm laborers, developers and aging hippies demanded a novel’s broad canvas.
Mina El Attar: Did you experiment with different narrative styles or structures during the writing process?
Simone Martel: “Scattered” originally was a more conventional, confessional narrative, told with flashbacks, and even included scenes from childhood. There was more description. About her body, about sex, how her parents treated her; the spirited girl who tamps herself down to conform to society’s expectations; repression, anger, disappointment. Some of these darker notes seemed less important as I focused the narrative on the relationship. I accepted that this is basically a love story; the joy shined through.
The style of storytelling evolved once I located the voice of the woman in the man’s mind. The imagined conversation lent itself to a stream of consciousness, an impressionism that was new for me in my writing, a little surprising, even liberating. Maybe this freedom came out of my grieving. Was I letting go? An interesting question!
Mina El Attar: You’ve woven in many symbols of plants and gardening. Given your background as a gardener and your memoir, The Expectant Gardener, how much of your personal life finds its way into your fiction? Are there other themes from your life or interests that you enjoy exploring in your work?
Simone Martel: My earliest memories are of playing imaginary games in my parents’ big garden in the Berkeley hills, even pretending to be a stranger looking at the house and making up stories about the people living there. Being so imaginatively engaged with the natural world led to caring about the environment. Instead of going to grad school, I started an organic farm. Zarzamora came out of that experience. Later, as a new mom gardening in my own little backyard, words came into my head as I planted or weeded, describing what I was doing. Gardening sharpened my observational skills and made me a better writer.
As a partly sighted person, I struggle to see the world as clearly and truthfully as possible. Basic questions hang in my mind: What am I looking at? What’s happening here? Perhaps this drives my desire to write, or tell stories; to help myself answer these questions, to make sense of the world around me. The question of seeing or being seen, or maybe the frustration of not seeing or being seen, drives A Cat Came Back and maybe also pops up in “Scattered.”
More recently, my son’s interest in computers, along with the presence of information technology in our daily lives, has influenced this theme. AI! The uncanny valley! If literature and art can be said to have a purpose, surely that must be to help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world we live in. But what happens to understanding and empathy when you can’t trust the reality you perceive with your senses?
Mina El Attar: What do you feel you learned from writing this piece and how might it influence your future writing?
Simone Martel: I think I tend to be a conservative writer, by instinct, stylistically. (It felt a little wrong leaving a few incomplete sentences in “Scattered.”) I’ve always been careful with words, economical, distrusting wordplay and flashy writing as distracting or gimmicky. The way I tell a story needs to feel necessary and sincere. Since I wrote “Scattered,” storytelling for me has become a looser process. I’m more open to teasing out a theme, letting playfulness influence my narrative approach. I’ve been writing more speculative fiction, too. There are many ways to tell a story. Letting my imagination wander a bit leads to interesting, unexpected results. Taking a pit bull’s point of view in Zarzamora surprised me!
Simone Martel
Simone Martel is the author of a novel, A Cat Came Back, a memoir, The Expectant Gardener, and a story collection, Exile’s Garden. She was born in Oakland, California. After studying English at U.C. Berkeley, Simone created and operated an organic tomato farm in the Central Valley. She’s working on a new novel based on that experience.
Mina El Attar
Mina El Attar, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Trinity College Dublin, crafts contemporary short stories that pulse with emotional depth. Her explorations of relationships and friendships, rendered in a captivating stream of consciousness style, invite readers into the intricate landscapes of the human heart. With an innate talent for exploring the intricate human psyche, Mina's stories offer readers a vivid and empathetic window into the complexities of human connection.
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