>> Danielle Kurtzleben: All
right, welcome everyone.
Really happy to have you here.
>> I'm Danielle Kurtzleben.
I am a political 
correspondent for NPR.
But also in my spare time,
I review books for NPR
and sometimes for
The Washington Post.
And that is enough about me,
because we are here
to talk about Total which
 is a new collection
of short stories by Rebecca Miller.
She is a short story writer,
a novelist, a filmmaker.
She is one of those
multi-hyphenate people
who is ridiculously talented.
And I'm going to leave it to her
to introduce herself
a little more.
>> Rebecca Miller: Hello.
So, yeah, I started writing
fiction very early on,
but didn't ever think
I would publish it.
I was writing my short stories,
thinking I was trying
to find my films,
the short films that
I was making,
and gradually realized that
rather than throwing them away,
I could really start
to train myself
and learn how
to write fiction.
And that took
a number of years,
but then since then I've written
short stories and novels
and made films kind of
like in a rotating way
and sometimes adapted
my work from fiction to film,
in the case of Personal Velocity
and in the case of the
Private Lives of Pippa Lee.
And in fact, right now
I'm finishing a film
called She Came to Me,
which is sort of inspired
by one of the stories
in this collection
called She Came to Me,
but very loosely.
So, yeah, so I'm kind of
I don't know, I just --
I guess partly I started 
writing fiction because
it became impossible
 to get money for films.
And then I really --
I started trying to
publish fiction, rather,
I had already been writing it.
So that was sort of
my story was that
it was a way of
not going insane
and starting to like
keep telling stories
because I'm very
much a storyteller
and it was a way for me to--
and then amazingly,
I was able to be published
and people were interested in
what I was writing and so on.
But it's like, I guess
people just keep reinventing
reinventing themselves
as they go along.
That's what I've done.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Before
we get into
questions and answers today,
we thought it would be good
for Rebecca to read us
an excerpt,
and she has prepared one.
>> Rebecca Miller: So I
should explain
that this collection-- this
first story was written actually
when I had my youngest baby,
who is now 20.
And the collection really
has a big chunk of the flesh
of my life in it.
Not that it's autobiographical,
but that the things that
I was thinking about
and my concerns are
very much reflected in the book,
and I sometimes feel
like it's like
a bridge to my younger self.
So sometimes, it's interesting
because I almost --
it's not that I don't recognize
the person,
because in some cases
I had to finish
the stories much later.
Like recently
during the pandemic,
I finished some of the stories
which I didn't know
how to write back in the day
that when I started them.
This story was actually 
one of the earlier,
not the earliest,, but one of
the earlier ones that I began.
And I'll just read a little bit
 and explain a little bit
between the passages so you
can understand what's going on.
So this is called Mrs. Covet.
It started with the ladybugs.
The first one was a promise
of luck on a spring day
as I folded towels
in the kids’ bathroom.
The shiny little bubble
moved clumsily up the mirror,
seemed actually
to waddle in her red armor
with its cheerful yellow spots.
Ladybug, ladybug,
fly away home.
Your children are crying,
your house is on fire.
What's lucky about that?
I leaned over and
put a finger up to her.
She crawled
up on it.
I wondered, are you
supposed to make a wish?
So then we get to know
 Daphne a little bit.
She's pregnant.
She has two other kids.
And she talks--
there's a whole big stream
of consciousness bit,
which we're skipping.
About a week after
I saw the First Lady bug,
I noticed there were five
of them in the boys’ bathroom.
Two in the sink,
one in the bathtub,
two crawling around
 on the mirror.
Days after that,
I was reading Tyler a story
in his bed when one of them
dropped onto my cheek.
It panicked me, I shrieked.
I never knew they could fly.
They land clumsily, stupidly.
And when it's time to take off,
they push a little secret pair
of wings out from
under their shells.
Within a month,
I had counted 35 ladybugs
in the boys’ bathroom alone.
Then I started finding them
in the bedrooms,
our bathroom, the closets.
They were flying
more and more.
And one day one of them
was zooming around
in crazy circles and it bit me
in the back of the leg.
It was an invasion.
I started to think
they were evil.
But you can't kill a ladybug.
It's terrible luck
to kill a ladybug.
I started spending more
and more time out of the house.
Once I dropped
the boys at school,
I stayed out,
got a cup of decaf,
went food shopping, even went
to a matinee a couple of times.
Then I would pick up Tyler
from nursery school
and we'd go out to 
an early lunch.
The house was becoming a mess.
Orange peels under the beds,
grime in the toilet bowl.
Craig tried to be nice about it.
He knows how I get
when I'm pregnant.
It's hard to describe
what happens.
It's as though all the walls
in my mind slide down
like car windows
and the thoughts
just float freely 
around my brain.
I find socks in the freezer,
notebooks in the linen closet.
I once showed up two days
late to the dentist.
At least I got the time right.
But the ladybugs were 
threatening to be a real problem.
I couldn't sleep.
I didn't want to be in the house
and I wouldn't let Craig
get an exterminator.
One night, we were sitting
at the kitchen table
after dinner.
Craig watched as one of
the creatures crawled along
the edge of a bowl filled with
coagulating breakfast cereal.
Then he said, If you need help
with the house,
I'll get you someone.
I'll ask my mother.
I burst into tears.
I'm not sure if it was relief
or a premonition.
The very next day at 9 a.m.,
my mother in law,
Carol Rice, drove up
in her new Chevy Impala.
She was dressed
in baby blue.
Ironed slacks,
matching blue sweater
with shoulder pads in it.
Her white blonde hair
had even taken on a bluish cast.
Still in Craig's pajamas,
I watched her
through the window,
my belly pressing against the
glass as she got out of the car,
primly brushing imaginary crumbs
from her bust
and walked around
to the other side.
The passenger door opened
with ominous slowness.
I saw one hand gripped
the side of the doorframe.
A dark head appeared,
then swung out of view.
A moment passed.
Suddenly, an enormous woman
heaved herself
out of the low car and unfolded
 herself with difficulty.
She must have been
six feet tall, short dark hair,
athletic build, breasts
the size of watermelons.
Carol came up to her shoulder.
The two of them strode up
to the house.
Carol opened the door
with a perfunctory knock,
calling Daphne in her
high singsong voice.
Hi, Carol, I said.
My underarms were sweating,
my teeth were un-brushed,
my hair was snarled.
Carol looked me up
and down and sighed.
She'd had six kids
and I doubt she'd let herself
look like this for 
one single morning.
Honey, this is Nat.
She's going to get
your life in order.
The enormous woman
towered over me.
Her eyes were
a light piercing green.
Her massive chin
seemed clamped
onto the rest of her face
by a fierce under-bite.
She was wearing a vast sweat
suit, the color of concrete.
I hear you need a little help
with the house, she said.
And anyway, things gom, from bad to worse,
let's just say that.
[audience applauding]
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: So, I
wanted to start by asking,
first of all, this story I particularly loved
out of all of these, 
but this story really gets at
the theme of motherhood,
which is something that pops up
a lot in this story collection
and from a lot of angles
people dissatisfied
with their mothers, people
having difficulty being mothers.
I'm curious, why is this such
a rich theme
for you in your writing?
>> Rebecca Miller: I don't know.
I think probably family
is the thing that I understand
the best as a writer,
whether it's daughterhood,
motherhood, I have three sons.
My keenest memories
 is of family.
I think I'm an empathic person,
very much so.
I understand what people
are feeling a lot,
which is not always
the best situation.
And so it came
and happened naturally.
I mean, like I said, these 
stories were really written
over a long period of time
and they were published
in different publications.
And some of them
weren't published at all,
and I created them
 later, recently.
But there was this kind of like-
in most of the stories,
not all of them, there is
a mother child element
and it's not always like a warm
 and fuzzy sort of situation,
but nor is it always horrible.
I think it's about the
power of that relationship
and just the intense
power of it and how
that can be like an
egg or something.
You open it and a lot comes out
and it's like Pandora's box.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: I like 
that you talked about
that it's never a perfect,
warm, fuzzy,
soft focus relationship,
nor is it always horrible.
One thing I appreciated
about your book is
the voice that you write in,
because it is certainly
not sentimental,
but it's also not detached
and ironic.
Finding that line, I think must
be very difficult as a writer.
How would you describe
the voice that you write in?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, I think
I'm very much
about character and trying to find out,
like, who's the character
and how are they talking
and how would they talk?
And I guess
to some degree, of course,
I as a character am
in there somewhere.
But it's like I try
to inhabit characters as much
as I can as a writer,
and it's important to me,
like there is a lot of
humor in the book,
but at the same time it's
 important that it isn't like
really satire in the sense,
because I think satire
has a lot of distance.
Whereas, I think where I am is sort of
always pulsing between more distance
and then really going in
and allowing for emotion.
What I try to avoid
is sentimentality,
which I don't like very much.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: That may
be the perfect setup
to talk about
your title story, Total,
which, speaking
of satire versus not,
I mean, this is a story
that starts off--
I was reading it
and I thought,
oh, this is a heck of
a sci-fi story about
our obsession with
technology because
to set this up for the audience,
it's a short story set
in a world not so unlike ours,
where a company makes phones
called Total Phones,
and they are phones that are
so enjoyable
and addictive that
they kind of ruin
people's lives.
And furthermore, to that end,
they cause some really
terrible birth defects
in some of the women
that use them.
And these are called
Total children.
They come
to be known as.
But, the story,
it starts off talking about this
but ends up becoming
a family drama
as a teen girl rescues
her sister
who has these birth defects
from a care facility.
And what we see is just sort
of a road story
of them being on the run.
And I'm wondering,
I found myself wondering,
tell me about
the dystopic frame
that you put on a family drama.
Why did those work
together for you?
>> Rebecca Miller: I have
to admit,
there are some stories
that are like a mystery
even to oneself as a writer.
And that particular story,
I really can't tell you too much
about where it came from.
I was a painter
when I started out.
That's what
I was trained as.
And I had this cycle of dreams
that I painted from a lot.
There were these babies
that had--
often they had these triangular
sort of rocky kind of heads,
and that was very
much the model
for the children with
 the Total Syndrome.
So in a sense, it was like going
back to this very early thing
that I had been interested in,
obsessed with
when I was younger.
But also I think I needed to go
into the future slightly
to make it possible
to tell the story.
I couldn't really tell
the story of the Total--
I couldn't do it I felt,
in the present.
And I've never had
that experience before.
I've never written anything
that was science fiction,
and I never probably
will again.
But it was just--
it seemed necessary.
And it came in
a very unconscious way.
We lived in Ireland
at that time,
and I found myself just taking
notes in a little notebook,
and I took notes
for a couple of years.
And the story kind of
like just was--
not the whole thing
 was dictated to me,
but I just kept 
hearing these lines.
And you'll see
if you read the story,
it's kind of written
in this other way.
There are a lot of like
individual lines
and it's quite airy in between
and then you get into
these dense passages.
So yeah, it's a combination,
isn't it,
of like sort of sci-fi,
but then also
it's about the relationship
with this girl
and her mother
and her rage at her mother.
But at the same time,
she finds that perhaps
her motivation for rescuing
her sister
is darker than she thought.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Yeah.
One thing I did want
to ask you about is,
yes, you have
this main character,
a teenage girl,
who is rescuing as she thinks,
rescuing her sister
and this teenage girl
is also quite angry
 at her mother.
I'm wondering when
you have characters
in conflict like that,
especially when your protagonist
is really angry at
someone else in the story,
how much empathy do
you have for your characters,
even the characters
who are behaving badly
or questionably in your stories?
>> Rebecca Miller: I think
I always have empathy
for my characters.
It's the only way
I can write them.
I'm not saying that they
always come off very well.
I mean, as characters.
But I like them enough
to write about them.
I've never written about someone
who is purely evil
or completely without conflict.
The minute somebody
has conflict,
they have goodness, right, 
because like it's both.
And I think that that is
very interesting to me,
the way that people can be,
doing something really
not good and yet also have
the desire to be good
or even sometimes the
feeling that they're doing good.
You know, that's how most
bad things get done.
They don't get done
by people who think
they're doing the wrong thing.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Right, 
that's very fair.
We have a lot of stories and I
really enjoyed so many of them.
So I want to make sure
we touch on a few more.
The stories we've talked about 
so far, Mrs. Covet and Total.
Both are a piece
with the rest of the book
because they have
a sort of turn in them
where you suddenly understand,
Oh, this is what
the story is about,
or, oh, this just went
from bad to worse.
And there's another story 
in here called Vapor,
where a woman runs into an ex,
it turns out a pretty bad ex,
but what the story becomes
is a sort of retelling
of not just how she met him,
but of many past
relationships of hers.
We sort of get a tour
of her romantic past.
And as I was reading it,
I found myself going,
Oh, this is what this is about.
All right, I'm here for it.
And I'm wondering,
as you're writing,
are you thinking about
the reader and thinking,
I'm going to surprise 
the reader here?
Or is it more just I'm going
to write what's on my soul
and the reader can feel
however they feel?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well,
I think it's back and forth.
That's a really
interesting question.
I think on the one hand,
like in Vapors,
I had this sense that I knew
what the big gush was,
it's like somebody--
 like Nixon artery
and all the blood comes out.
I knew that it
was going to be about
this thing where, like just that
all this stuff happens.
But it was like
what's the frame?
And it wasn't until much later
that I found the frame,
which is meeting 
the old boyfriend
and that that 
brings it all back.
But in a case like--
there's another story called
I Want You to Know,
which is really my
Edgar Allan Poe homage, kind of,
sort of about--
and it's about something
horrible that a woman finds out
when she's renovating a desk
that she finds
in her new house 
that's an old farmhouse.
But she recently
bought this old farmhouse
and she renovates the desk and
 inside is this horrible letter.
I carried around
the horrible letter for years
thinking this was the story.
And then I realized,
no, it isn't the story.
It's a story inside the story.
So sometimes, it takes me a
really long time to understand
even what I'm even
writing
because I think for me, like
some people are much faster.
I don't think I'm 
a very fast writer.
It takes me sometimes
a very long time.
Maybe because I work
quite unconsciously,
and then it takes me
a long time to catch up
with my unconscious.
my
conscious mind has to catch up.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: I want
you to know,
you have the letter
or the story that
the woman finds in the desk,
and then the story
of her finding
that in the desk,
when you say that you
started with that internal story
and you didn't have
the frame story yet,
how did you know that
 the internal
story needed a frame story?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, because
I couldn't make it work.
I couldn't figure it out like 
it was so raw and so brutal.
And it was like it needed
to be really raw and brutal
and kind of just almost 
vomited in a way.
But I couldn't then turn
it into a story.
It just was this thing. 
It was like a found object.
I don't know.
And then there was this scene
when the lady of the house
and there's a big manor house
on the edge of the Hudson 
that these two
farming young people, 
organic farmers, are invited.
And this woman,
her dog is very overexcited,
and to calm the dog down,
she masturbates the dog,
just matter of factly,
while talking to this couple.
And that was something that--
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: it's a
beautiful moment, yeah.
>> Rebecca Miller: It's a 
beautiful, very heartwarming.
But the funny thing
is that that is a story
that a boyfriend of mine
had told me had happened,
like he had seen
this woman do.
And I for years, I was like,
I've got to find something.
So I was like, maybe I could.
So funny how you
bring it all together somehow.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: That's 
the first time
anyone's ever used the phrase,
 masturbated a dog
in an interview with me.
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah, it's 
 an unusual practice.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: But 
 I Want You to Know,
and Vapors both, also deals, 
 speaking of themes
that run throughout this book, 
 and there's a lot,
but sort of with the tension 
 between reality
and fiction and Vapor
 it's more subtle.
But there's a line in it 
 where the person,
the protagonist says, 
 why bother feeling
so much in life if all 
 of it turns to vapor?
Both this and the end, 
 I Want You to Know,
seem to deal with 
 emotional reactions
and how real they are, sort of.
Is that a fair read 
 of those stories?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, 
 I think I mean--
I guess I Want You to Know 
 it’s a lot about perception
and how you perceive things
 to be one way
and then you're given 
 more information
and your brain transforms it.
It's like we're constantly 
 reassessing each other
and reassessing situations.
So I don't know 
 if that's what you mean.
I'm not sure I know 
 what you mean exactly.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: So 
in part, I'm afraid to give away
all of I Want You to Know.
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah, 
 yeah, yeah.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: The 
 audience should read it.
But I think what 
 I'm wondering about is,
I Want You to Know 
 very much is about
the power of a story to
 really affect someone.
To really haunt someone.
>> Rebecca Miller: Oh, yes. 
 Yes.
And it's well, 
 to some degree,
it's about the power 
 of writing and reading
and how strange it is to read.
And I mean, partly it's 
 because she reads this letter
and she has a completely 
 different idea of her house.
She suddenly realizes 
 that there's been
this horrible murder 
 in the house.
And so she kind of 
 like sees the house
in a completely different way.
And then she meets the woman
 that I was just describing.
And that woman puts 
 it in yet another--
like actually twists it 
 around like and says,
Oh, but this is 
what it really is.
And so, but then she's left 
 with what the letter gave her,
because once you 
 read something,
it's in your brain and 
 it's very hard to get it out.
Yeah, so in that sense,
it's kind of about the strange
 power of reading and writing.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: I want 
 to get to another story
in the book, She Came to Me, 
 which you mentioned already,
and it's the only story 
 that is written
from the point of view 
 of a male protagonist.
And I was wondering, 
 how different do you find it
to write men versus women? 
 Is one harder or not?
Or how do you think about it?
>> Rebecca Miller: I think 
 I probably-- I mean,
I definitely have like 
 lots of characters
knocking on the door 
 of my head,
and most of them 
 are definitely female.
But there are sometimes men
 that I get to get the gift of.
And Kieran was definitely 
 one of those guys.
And I've written for 
 male characters in film,
like main characters 
 a couple of times,
and I only do it when I can--
and a novel, Jacob's Folly, 
 has got a male protagonist.
I think that they come
 as strongly
and with as much vigor 
 as the female characters.
But more rarely.
Partly because I find women
 so very fascinating
and kind of, I don't know,
just multi-layered 
 and mysterious.
Not that I don't feel 
 that way about men,
but strangely, a little 
 bit less so perhaps.
I don't know, I don't know what 
 it is exactly.
I mean, maybe 
 because I'm female,
I guess that's an answer.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: We're 
 pretty mysterious
and fascinating, I think. 
 I mean, personal opinion.
Speaking of the differences
 that you seem to write
between men and
 women, at least in the
sample size we have here,
one thing I noticed is that
 your women characters
are very aware of their bodies,
like aware of the effects
 their bodies have
on people around them, 
 especially men.
Aware of one character's
 pregnant body.
You write one of the 
 best descriptions of puberty
that I've read of this 
 teenage girl who suddenly
has this unwieldy mass 
 that she has to carry around
and is just not 
 used to, I mean.
I wonder, is that something--
is that a uniquely 
 female issue or is that
just something that 
 we all deal with?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, 
 I do think that
there is something
 particular about
the experience of acquiring
 a female body
in puberty suddenly and it is,
depending on what body 
 you end up with,
it can be very confusing, 
especially if you're very young.
And I had a friend who
 had a situation
of having become 
 developed very, very early
and very dramatically.
And she talked a little 
 bit about that.
And I was just really interested
 in that idea of like the body
and how you have to 
 catch up with your body.
I mean, all of life is 
 about catching up.
Like, I feel like 
 I'm still catching up
with how old I am now, 
 like I'm still confused.
Like I think that me, or my
 children, I still think they're
like five years younger 
 than they actually are.
So it's kind of like everything
 is moving ahead
and we're trying to catch up.
And I think puberty 
 in particular is a moment
where like you were 
 a child five minutes ago
and suddenly you're not.
But yeah, I think that 
 inhabiting your body
and experience of 
 having a body
is all a big part 
of writing to me.
Like writing is a very 
 sensual thing for me,
very image-heavy and very
 sensual and about the senses.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: I want 
 to ask you
a broader question because
 you've mentioned a few things
about writing today, 
 about characters
knocking on the
 door of your brain,
about writing being sensual,
about being a sort of 
 subconscious writer.
I'm curious about 
 your writing process.
Do you have-- is it a thing
 where you sit down every day
and is it a discipline 
 sort of thing or is it a wait
for the stories 
 to come to you?
How do you go about 
 writing your stories?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, 
 when I'm in a kind of
a writing mode, 
 I am very disciplined
to start in the morning, 
 and I write
and I usually read what 
 I wrote the day before
and then rewrite some of that
 and then write some more.
And when I've written novels,
I try to write three pages a day
just because if you--
I found myself if 
 I was able to do that,
even if I could only write, 
 knowing that parts of it
were going to be 
 completely rewritten,
it would keep me on track,
because otherwise I found
 it really overwhelming.
I have had 
 one period particularly
of complete writer's block, 
 which was a nightmare.
But generally, what is the 
 most easy for me is that
I have a lot of characters
 that come to me
and then finding form
 for those characters
and finding a way 
 to clothe their concerns
and their inner life 
 with action that is taken from
who they are is like, 
 that's the work.
You see what I'm saying?
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Gotcha.
Well, I don't want to 
 monopolize everything here.
I know that we have 
 a question and answer portion.
So if you have questions,
it looks like we have
 two mics here.
So by all means, don't be shy.
>> I haven't read the book yet,
but could you tell me
 about the cover?
>> Rebecca Miller: The cover?
>> Yes.
Well, the cover was designed by
 this wonderful designer
for R. Strauss, 
 Rodrigo Corral.
And it's basically the idea 
 of a child consuming--
the idea of being eaten
 up by your child,
but also sort of like the 
mixed feelings and the power of,
like we were talking about 
 the mother child dynamic.
>> Yeah.
>> First of all, 
 how are you doing?
>> Rebecca Miller: Good. 
 I'm fine. Hot.
>> Yeah, so one of the questions
 I had, I'm a writer.
I'm actually releasing my first 
 debut poetry book this winter.
And it's funny because 
 I have similar themes.
Like the --
>> Rebecca Miller: Oh, really?
>> that book, which was very
 interesting to me.
But one of the questions 
 that I have for you,
I'm young, 
 I'm just getting started.
And I wanted to know what was
 one of the biggest challenges
you've come across 
 when writing fiction?
Because I know that 
 I want to be writing poetry
for a little while, 
 but I'm taking my time
before I dive into 
 my first fiction
and we’re all building
 that a little bit.
So I'll be writing poetry 
 for a little while.
But what was 
 your biggest challenge
when it came to 
 writing fiction, you know?
That's a loaded question.
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah. 
No, no, I think but in my case,
because I had written fiction
 early on,
but then I went 
 and I really trained,
I started writing
 screenplays.
And screenplays are 
very much blueprints
that don't have-- like they're
the opposite in a way
 of fiction.
They're just like skeletons
 and they lack
all the sensory smells and 
 tastes and all that stuff.
So I had to kind of 
learn how to slow down
and just really try to give 
 the reader a full experience.
In a way, I think being a 
poet is a wonderful basis
for being a fiction writer 
 because that's really where
the line to line, image 
 to image stuff happens.
And you have a better chance of
 being I think a good writer.
I had to back into that
 and find it.
So I understood really 
 more story and then
I had to kind of back into 
 the fleshy part, you know.
>> Yeah, that helps out a lot. 
I appreciate that.
And one thing I noted down
 that she mentioned
that I don't know it's something
 that was really important
was finding form 
for your characters.
I found that just 
 statement profound.
So I appreciate that and
 I'm taking notes, so, yeah.
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah. 
 Oh, great. Well, good luck.
I'm excited to read your poetry.
>> Hi. I kind of came a little 
bit late, but I'm just curious.
I know very little 
 about writing,
but maybe you’ve already
 answered this,
but what comes 
 to you like first usually?
Like world building, characters,
 a conflict, an idea?
Which, or does it, is it just--?
>> Rebecca Miller: What's 
 she asking?
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: What 
 comes to you first?
Character's, world building, 
 conflict?
>> Rebecca Miller: All right.
Character, I'd say 
 I start with character.
Almost always start
 with character.
And then the 
character is eventually,
if you're true 
to the characters,
eventually the 
 characters collide
and then you have conflict,
especially if it's in 
 a family situation.
And then you also, of course, 
 have internal conflict.
And sometimes it's like it's sparked by--
there's one story in the 
 collection called Receipts
and there's an assault.
And that assault was something 
 I was carrying
around for a long time.
And how do I tell 
 the story of that assault?
And then I gradually found the
 character that it happens to,
>> Okay.
>> Rebecca Miller: and stuff 
like that.
>> Okay, thank you very much. 
I appreciate it.
>> Hi.
You've sort of touched 
 on this earlier, but can you--
do you feel or do you
 see a relationship
between your film process
 and your writing process?
And has either of them 
 really fed the other,
or is it a constant layering
 or what's that like
to be doing both of those
 so intensely?
>> Rebecca Miller: Well, the 
 film and the writing--
it's interesting because
 I think
because I'm so deeply a writer,
I do think about writing as 
 a kind of model, even in film.
Like I write my own films
 generally, so far.
I'm always looking, 
 but I haven't found anything.
So I always write
 my own films.
And then, in a way when
 you cast the characters
and you cast the actual actors,
that's a kind of rewrite
 right there.
Like you immediately said, boom 
it's going to be this person.
All of a sudden, the person 
 you originally imagined
is gone, and now 
 you have this person.
Then they speak and every 
people talk about improvisation.
And I think all acting is
 actually improvisation
because you're saying 
 it differently every time.
It doesn't matter if 
 the words are different.
So that's a kind of rewriting.
And then when you edit, 
 that's a kind of rewriting.
So in a sense, I guess 
 you could say it's all writing,
but not necessarily 
 writing by me.
I mean, there's a lot of 
 loss of control in filmmaking,
which, and it's obviously 
 much more collaborative.
So, in that sense.
But I do find that 
 they're very linked
and very different pleasures.
On the occasions when
 I've adapted my own work,
actors have taught me
 a lot about what I wrote.
They've taught me a
 lot because they have
these deep insights that because
 they're living as the people.
So that's also fun.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, 
 thanks.
So that's also fun.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, 
 thanks.
We have one over here.
>> I guess, how much of 
the stories were written
during the pandemic and did that
have any impact 
 on the stories?
>> Rebecca Miller: That--?
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: How much
 of the stories were written--
>> Rebecca Miller: Oh, 
 during the pandemic.
How much of the stories were
 written during the pandemic?
Well, a lot of like--
 four or five of them.
Three of them were finished
 during the pandemic,
and one of them was--
two of them were entirely 
 written during the pandemic.
Chekhovians, which is the 
 last story in the book.
But Vapors, I had been 
 working on for years
and finished during
 the pandemic
and I Want You to Know
was written during the pandemic.
Although, as I said, I was 
 carrying around this sort of
heart of I Want You to Know 
 for many years.
So the whole--
and I kind of went into all
 the stories and it's true,
like many writers, I think I was
 forced to sit and be isolated
and I was with my family, 
 but I was pretty isolated.
So that helped writing a lot.
Definitely.
Hi.
>> You mentioned how some of 
 these stories are built
on bones you've been kind of 
 carrying around for many years.
And I wonder how it felt 
to return to kind of a past self
as embodied in the written word,
like both stylistically 
 and emotionally? Thanks.
>> Rebecca Miller: Say that 
again?
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: The 
 stories that you started
a longer time ago and you came
 back to how did it feel to--
>> Rebecca Miller: Oh yeah.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Get to 
 come back to that past?
>> Rebecca Miller: Come back
 to them?
Well, in some ways,
 I felt like I was able,
especially with Vapors, 
 where that was something where
I had taken notes many years
 earlier and I had no idea,
I really had no idea
 how to tell the story.
And it was you know-- 
 I was able to--
I think partly also 
 because of distance.
And I was able to sort of-- 
 and just having done it
for a long time and 
 gotten better at it,
I was able to sort of see
 how to do it.
So in some ways
 it was nice because I felt like
I understood my craft better
 and was able to kind of
understand certain things 
 that I couldn't understand.
So it was kind of like 
 I created some raw material
in some cases and then
 was able to mine it
or something 
 or like fashion it later.
It was really interesting.
It was a very 
 interesting experience
all around this book, yeah.
>> Did you find yourself needing
 to have kind of empathy
for where you were as a person
when you started those stories?
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah, 
 I felt like I did
have more empathy
 for-- I do.
I feel like yeah, I felt like I had
 more empathy for myself.
And also I'm struck 
 by some of the stories,
when I read Mrs. Covet, 
 for example,
I thought of that as 
 a very cheerful story.
And recently I reread it  and
it's really dark and terrifying.
And I thought it was
 just this comic little romp.
Really is, it's like, 
 it's sort of horrible--
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: It ends 
with a felony--
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah, yeah, 
 definitely, no.
I mean, it's like 
 the worst nightmare,
but I didn't remember
 it that way.
And then yeah, 
 I think I often have a sort of
perception of myself as sort of
much sunnier than perhaps
 I actually am.
But yeah, so it was like
 I definitely did feel like
I had empathy for myself
 as a younger person
and I was also like playing 
 around with memories of myself
as an even younger person
 because although like I said,
this is not autobiographical,
but it is like the 
 concerns that I had
when I was 15 or 16 
 the things that I remember
thinking about 
and going through.
You know, there's one girl 
 in the Chekhovians,
there's a girl who says 
 to her mother,
most people in the world 
are actually dead.
So the living are the exception.
And it's sort of like
 -- and it's kind of weird,
I remember having these thoughts
 that were these kind of,
I don't know, ruminations as 
 I was lying on the driveway,
which I actually 
 gave her, this girl,
the tendency to lie 
 on the driveway to, -- yeah.
>> Thank you.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Anyone
 else?
Oh, we have someone.
Right here.
>> Hi, I'm just talking 
 to general question
about short stories 
 in general.
I'm used to reading O Henry
 style of short stories.
They always end up with 
 a big bang in the end.
You know, you expect the 
 story to go somewhere.
There's a certain revelation
 and you are like, wow,
what an ending, you know?
And then when I come 
 to other modern short stories,
I expect a similar kind of 
 you know, I go to the story,
I like it, and then I'm expecting 
 something to throw me off.
And that doesn't always
 happen, you know?
So I don't know if it's 
 something that's in the back
of you as a writer 
 to end the story in a way
you give that emotional impact.
Is that something that 
 we carry all the time
or is it something
 that it's changing
with modern short stories?
You know, you don't really get--
sometimes the story ends, 
 you don't even know it's ended.
You're still hoping something
 else to follow the story.
>> Rebecca Miller: Right. 
So we're talking about
O Henry story, reading 
O Henry stories and the fact
that they have a surprise twist--
>> Yeah, it's a lot of twists
 that happen.
>> Rebecca Miller: And you 
 feel like short stories
now don't have that much. 
 Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, not I guess that 
does happen a bit
in this collection,
 there are twists
where you sort of 
 are like, oh, aha.
So yeah, I guess I do like 
 to do that personally.
I think I know 
 what you mean.
I mean, I like stories 
 that are almost like--
>> I mean, my question is,
 is it at the back
of your mind to do
 that as a writer to--
>> Rebecca Miller: Do I 
 have it in mind to do that?
Yeah, I think I do
 like to do that.
I think I do like to do that.
It's almost like there's
 a punchline sometimes.
It's almost like that you
 come around and you--
I think that the funny thing
 about short stories
as opposed to novels, 
 I've always thought that
they were the most 
 metaphysical form of writing
because, well, maybe not
 compared to poetry,
but I don't know as 
 much about poetry,
but I'd say that with 
 the short story,
because they don't have
 the same kind of
sense of responsibility
 that a novel does.
Like you read a novel,
 it's a real investment
and it's got to kind of like,
 the chickens
have to come home to roost, 
 I mean, at the end,
whereas a short story
 can kind of lift off
and the best short stories, 
 it's very hard to define,
but it's like they just lift off
 at the end
and you feel kind of 
 like you've been
taken off the ground
 a little bit.
And there are certain stories
 like John Cheever
is like one of the
 great examples,
Chekhov sometimes where you
 just like, you get--
it's like some kind of 
 chemical thing happens
and you can't-- I don't know 
 that you can control that,
but that as a short 
 story writer,
I think you're always 
 going for that.
And it's very hard to define,
but I think it's a little bit
 what you're talking about.
>> Yeah, I just see
 the difference
between the old short stories
 and the new ones, yeah.
I keep seeing 
 the difference, yeah.
>> Rebecca Miller: Right, 
 that's interesting.
>> Thank you.
>> Rebecca Miller: Thank you.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: I think
 we have
a couple of minutes left.
So if no one else has
 a question,
I am going to be self centered
 and ask my final question.
>> Rebecca Miller: Okay.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Well, 
because you mentioned
in there when you were talking
 about your writing process
that you had a bad bout 
 of writer's block years back.
And I'm wondering, 
 how did you get over it?
>> Rebecca Miller: I ended 
 up volunteering in
a women's shelter in Dublin
 because I was living in Dublin.
My husband, we were there and I had--
I didn't know anyone 
 and I didn't know what to do.
And so I ended up 
 volunteering there.
And basically, 
 the solution was taking
my eyes off myself,
 not thinking about myself.
I didn't do it for material, 
 definitely not.
But I did write a short story
 that was about that experience,
which was in 
 the short story collection
called Personal Velocity.
There's a story 
 called Delia, which is,
I set in the United States, 
 but it was definitely
about my experience of working
 in the women's shelter,
and that happened 
 some years later.
But that was, yeah.
So it was, I think that 
 what happens with writers is
like you just look at 
 something all the time
and it squirms, 
 it can't flourish.
You have to kind of
 let it happen.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Give it 
 some air.
>> Rebecca Miller: Yeah.
Yeah, I think so. 
 I think so.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Okay. 
 Well, no other questions.
All right. 
 Well, it has been an honor.
It has been just a pleasure
 to read your work
and then to get to
 talk to you about it.
>> Rebecca Miller: Thank you
 so much.
for this wonderful opportunity.
>> Danielle Kurtzleben: Of 
 course, everyone.
Let's hear it for 
 Rebecca Miller.
[audience applauds]