Courtness Photography, 2015
Marléne Zadig
(rhymes with “train a bad pig”)
Age: 34
Location: Silicon Valley, California
Education: B.S. from UC Davis; M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland
The Writer
Do you see writing as a career?
Yes, but I know that it’s a long game.
What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment as a writer?
That each new story I write is usually incrementally better than the last. I wrote a novel in 2011/2012 for my master’s thesis, but I’m a much better writer now, so I can’t say that it’s my greatest accomplishment.
What is your ultimate goal as a writer?
To be one day introduced as “the writer, Marléne Zadig” instead of “Marléne Zadig, a writer.” But seriously, I want to be as involved in the literary world as I can, teaching, publishing, writing, community, all of it. It’s all I want to do.
What is your greatest challenge as a writer?
Parenting small children. I write a blog about this very challenge with another writer friend, Dave Green, who struggles with the same thing. Parenting takes away time and head-space, so the challenge is to love your children, stay awake, and steal both time and head-space from wherever you can.
The Work
Tell us about your work in Crack the Spine.
“We Are All So Young and Lively” follows a man named Rod, who’s in a self-proclaimed funk, as he and his not-overtly-sexy wife Kerry head to a neighborhood flavor-tripping/Cinco de Mayo party. He and his friends’ lives are very structured and circumscribed, and these flavor berries (an actual thing)—which change everything from sour to sweet—are a catalyst for everyone to sort of spiral into their worst, desperate (perhaps more honest) selves.
Is there a main theme or message in this piece?
There’s definitely not an intentional message in this piece, though it’s certainly a product of my environment. It’s a bit of a response to the weird, hyper-gendered interactions that take place in many communities once people are married with children, that I’d assumed growing up was sort of a bygone-era thing but is very much alive. I used to think I was interacting with others just as people, but married people often respond to me first as a mother and a spouse (which are not my primary identities) before I get to be perceived as a person, and I’m always pushing back and trying to subvert that in some way. There’s also a lot of light vs. dark in this work, though I think people can draw a variety of different conclusions from how it all plays out.
What inspired this work?
This one was simple. My husband was telling me about these magic berries that made everything sour taste sweet, and I looked it up to see what they were called and where they came from. It sounded super fake, but sure enough, there was a NY Times article from a few years back on the so-called flavor-tripping party craze, which spoke to me as being something so very suburban and Silicon Valley. I threw in Cinco de Mayo to complicate things because white people can’t help but screw up a celebration that has absolutely nothing to do with them (us).
Tell us about another project you have published or are currently working on.
I had a story published last month by the friendly folks at Split Lip Magazine called “Of Two Minds” about a young guy from Spencer, Iowa who’s moved to a city in Minnesota because it has an IKEA, and it’s been his life-long dream to work there. The kid is what you might call a different sort of thinker, and the reader slowly learns about some of the very tangible obstacles he’s had to overcome to be where he is today, which isn’t exactly where you thought he was at the beginning.
What inspired this work?
That was a story I started on one of my exhausted, sleep-deprived, “off” days as a parent when I make myself write but don’t feel up to the task, and that’s when I sometimes turn to the “Random article” button on Wikipedia to help me get inspired. Spencer, Iowa was the first entry that came up, and I was taken by the bit about it being listed in the top 10 places to live in America back in 2007 by RelocateAmerica.com, and how hilariously not scientific their metric was. The story came out of that disparity.
Where/When can we find this work?
It’s in the April-June 2015, Issue 14 of Split Lip Magazine, which you can find online here: http://www.splitlipmagazine.com/#!14-marlne-zadig/cl0m
The Methods
Where do you write?
On a couch, either at home or at a café. Always tip the barista; it saves your bladder from having to buy too much coffee and promotes good will.
What is your usual starting point for a piece?
I almost always start with a single moment or image that pops into my head from nowhere and go from there. I usually have absolutely no idea where it’s going to go. Whenever I used to start with a point or a plot in mind, the thing was always dead before it even got off the ground, but plot is still very important to me. I love plot. I just happen to love discovering what happens next in my stories in the same way a reader would.
How do you react to editorial rejections of your work?
I get rejections about every other day (the most I think was 5 in one day, but that was right after Christmas), and I don’t do carpet-bombing campaigns; they’re well-considered submissions, only about five copies of a single story at one time. I send the story out again (thoughtfully) right away to somewhere else that I’ve already researched that might be a better fit. If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn’t have sent it out to begin with. Then I read more widely for inspiration/instruction. Then I try to write an even better story.
How do you react when one of your submissions is accepted for publication?
Always champagne. Always. Then I try to write an even better story.
What is your best piece of advice on how to stay sane as a writer?
Go to readings, book launches, and writing conferences. One day, hopefully, with talent and luck, you’ll be up at the podium, and you don’t want there to be an empty house. Also, because writing alone in a room all the time is crazy.
The Madness
What is your favorite book?
Roget’s Thesaurus, Third Edition. The smell alone is to die for. Some famous writer said that if you need to look a word up in the Thesaurus, it’s the wrong word. While I appreciate the sentiment, I think that’s bunk. I love going down the rabbit hole of a well-considered catalogue of linguistic associations.
If you could have dinner with one fictional character, who would it be and why?
Data, from Star Trek: The Next Generation (before the emotion chip), because I’d want to find out for myself if he’s really human. (Nerd alert.)
What is your favorite word?
Wow, no one’s ever asked me this before, but I actually have one. I’ve been waiting my entire life to answer this question! I remember the exact moment when I was maybe six years old in a parking lot, walking with my mother to a store, and I said the word “cook” aloud in a sentence and loved the way it felt in my throat and how symmetrical it was. So I decided right then that it was my favorite word. I’m not shitting you. It sounds ridiculous now that I talk about it, but I was six, so there you go. It stuck with me.
What’s in that cup on your desk?
The most bitter, darkest full-leaf Assam tea there is. I love tannins. Dragon pearl jasmine if it’s the afternoon.
What is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?
Aside from seeing my children for the first time once they’d been handed to me after emerging directly from my lady parts (I’m never going to get over how bizarre that is)…it was a nude dance performance I saw in college, sponsored by the university. It’s not what you think. Sure, everyone was rolling around together naked on stage, but it was an expression of basic primal movement and form, and everything was stripped bare (literally, yes, but I mean figuratively). The self, sexuality, the ego—irrelevant. All that remained was their essential humanness and vulnerability, and I suppose that’s what I’m trying to get at every time I sit down to write.
Rain or Sunshine?
Rain (Petrichor! Thunder!)
Beach or Mountains?
Mountains (The Sierras)
Cats or Dogs?
Puppies! (and kittens)
Additional Reading
Personal website/blog: writersblockduo.com
Twitter profile: @MarleneZadig