Interview
Writing Through Grief in 5,000 Words or Less: An Interview with Melissa Wiley
by Elyssa Finkelstein, Tyler Riggs, & Kelly Walz
October 2018
Grief comes in many different forms, and so does the writing of it. Writing through grief does not necessarily crave an audience at first, but a desire to craft and reflect on past experiences in order to learn and heal. Often, writers are drawn to write about their grief in an attempt to put the pain into words. Author Melissa Wiley lost both of her parents over a short period of time, so she is well-acquainted with grief.
Lyric essays have allowed Wiley to not only explore her grieving process, but also her travels, sexuality, body comfort, and emotional release. In her own words, “for me to have a shot of functioning in this world, I have to express my own torrent of emotions in some way.” In her collection of essays, Antlers in Space and Other Common Phenomena (Split Lip Press), Wiley presents her experiences to the reader as beautiful, connected stories grappling with pain and identity. She pursues reconciliation and forces the reader, inescapably, to empathize with her. |

Glassworks Magazine (GM): Before opening your collection of essays, we assumed all of them would directly address the loss of your parents. In “The Memory of Water and Underwater Bees,” you recount first-hand memories of your parents. But in your essays “Two Plastic Ponies” and “Antlers in Space,” your parents never enter the essays, at least on the surface level. This blend seems to be fueled by a desire to write through your grief. How has focusing on other memories from your life aided your grieving process?
Melissa Wiley (MW): Not long after they both died, my body felt so physically heavy that I had a hard time moving. I easily lost my breath even doing something as unathletic as walking from my bedroom to my kitchen. I gained a lot of weight. I’m sure a lot of people who have grieved have experienced this same lack of energy, and I hope that everyone who has done so has also felt it lift over the course of time. For me, it was important to portray the lifting, which I experienced in the desire to travel, for instance, as well as my sexual desire returning. Having to reckon with other stuff in life besides my emotions was itself evidence of the fact I was healing, though I didn’t always realize it. Obviously, life continues to happen even if a large part of you feels stuck in a pain rooted in the past, so writing about more recent memories unrelated to my parents was really me learning to live without them. It was an acknowledgement of the fact that I was still alive, even if I didn’t always want to be.
GM: Lyric essays are less conventional than memoirs, containing slices of multiple genres in one, and frankly, they seem harder to write. Why have you chosen to write separate, memoir-like pieces instead of one whole interlinking narrative? Were you already comfortable writing lyric essays, or did your exigence to write choose your form for you?
MW: You nailed it with the latter. I didn’t really have a choice as to the form, not at the time of writing these pieces. I only put them into a book long after I had written these as well as many, many more that will likely never see the light of publication. I know it sounds naïve—because it is—but I didn’t know that what I was writing at the time even had a name. I read novels, the occasional memoir, and scientific or historical nonfiction books, but that was about it. I didn’t know what a lyric essay was until long after I had started writing them. Then I started reading about how a lot of people think this form is annoying for different reasons, how the genre is already dead, etc. I didn’t really care, though, because I knew I hadn’t tried to make my writing fit a form to begin with. I had simply needed to give my feelings and experiences a shape, and this was the one they took. I also didn’t have the writerly stamina or vision to craft a continuous memoir. That would have been too intimidating and also have felt too vainglorious, though now I would dispute that view. But writing one intensive sliver of life at a time in 5,000 words or less—I was comfortable with that.
GM: You say in “Falling Backward,” “Americans must go abroad to feel at home and have done so for ages.” You have spent time visiting Italy, France, New Zealand, Finland, the Caribbean islands, and other places. Has this traveling helped you deal with writing about what was going on back at home?
MW: Traveling is always a good—and I should also say privileged—way to reflect on life at home. Because of the physical distance involved, it affords perspective at the most literal level. It can also be a way of trying to escape who you are in your normal life. Simply the act of going somewhere far and foreign seems to lend you freedom to act differently than you might at home. For me, it often feels like it creates more physical space inside my body. My muscles often feel looser in other cities. When I say freedom, though, I don’t necessarily mean letting it all go, using a place as an adult playground and waking up with the worst hangover of your life. I just mean becoming a more curious person who talks more easily to strangers, someone who wastes time in the most valuable of ways. Whenever we return from someplace we’ve loved, my husband and I usually vow to keep living like we’re still there, still traveling, so the world feels just as fresh. Doing that really means living in the present, which of course you don’t have to go anywhere to practice. To do this in daily life, at least in theory, is also to write from a place of more openness, more receptiveness without judgment. Travel can help with this, but the real work must always be done at home.
GM: You grew up in Indiana in a primarily rural environment. In “Bicycles in the Corn” you say, “only among the cornfields’ copper blankness has my true self ever risen to the surface.” Moving away from the home where you found your “true self,” have you found significant changes in your writing after relocating to Chicago?
MW: I think I’ve seen the same changes in my writing that I’ve seen in myself. From my perspective, a city doesn’t allow the same space to imagine things or people as much different than they are. I know that’s the opposite of how a lot of people feel. There’s a lot of glamorizing of the urban, but my experience has been more the opposite. The open skies—the endless stretch of stars—of where I grew up simply loomed too large, and I still miss seeing bigger sunsets and farther into the distance. So my writing has become a lot more grounded—even though I realize “grounded” may not be the first thing people might call my work—since not just moving to Chicago but fully inhabiting it, not having a part of me always wanting to revisit the old, familiar feeling of home again. After going home was no longer was an option, I found I had to fully commit to the life I’d chosen. I think writing then became a way of me reconciling myself to a reality stripped of its pastoral romanticism. This somehow wedged itself deep inside me despite the isolation and the farm chores, which I never relished. But being honest, in writing and life, about the ugly things I now feel stuck with became a way of accepting them. I also found an empowerment in describing things as they are without coloring them to reflect some kind of inner fantasy. The irony, of course, is that only then could a different, rawer kind of beauty emerge.
Melissa Wiley (MW): Not long after they both died, my body felt so physically heavy that I had a hard time moving. I easily lost my breath even doing something as unathletic as walking from my bedroom to my kitchen. I gained a lot of weight. I’m sure a lot of people who have grieved have experienced this same lack of energy, and I hope that everyone who has done so has also felt it lift over the course of time. For me, it was important to portray the lifting, which I experienced in the desire to travel, for instance, as well as my sexual desire returning. Having to reckon with other stuff in life besides my emotions was itself evidence of the fact I was healing, though I didn’t always realize it. Obviously, life continues to happen even if a large part of you feels stuck in a pain rooted in the past, so writing about more recent memories unrelated to my parents was really me learning to live without them. It was an acknowledgement of the fact that I was still alive, even if I didn’t always want to be.
GM: Lyric essays are less conventional than memoirs, containing slices of multiple genres in one, and frankly, they seem harder to write. Why have you chosen to write separate, memoir-like pieces instead of one whole interlinking narrative? Were you already comfortable writing lyric essays, or did your exigence to write choose your form for you?
MW: You nailed it with the latter. I didn’t really have a choice as to the form, not at the time of writing these pieces. I only put them into a book long after I had written these as well as many, many more that will likely never see the light of publication. I know it sounds naïve—because it is—but I didn’t know that what I was writing at the time even had a name. I read novels, the occasional memoir, and scientific or historical nonfiction books, but that was about it. I didn’t know what a lyric essay was until long after I had started writing them. Then I started reading about how a lot of people think this form is annoying for different reasons, how the genre is already dead, etc. I didn’t really care, though, because I knew I hadn’t tried to make my writing fit a form to begin with. I had simply needed to give my feelings and experiences a shape, and this was the one they took. I also didn’t have the writerly stamina or vision to craft a continuous memoir. That would have been too intimidating and also have felt too vainglorious, though now I would dispute that view. But writing one intensive sliver of life at a time in 5,000 words or less—I was comfortable with that.
GM: You say in “Falling Backward,” “Americans must go abroad to feel at home and have done so for ages.” You have spent time visiting Italy, France, New Zealand, Finland, the Caribbean islands, and other places. Has this traveling helped you deal with writing about what was going on back at home?
MW: Traveling is always a good—and I should also say privileged—way to reflect on life at home. Because of the physical distance involved, it affords perspective at the most literal level. It can also be a way of trying to escape who you are in your normal life. Simply the act of going somewhere far and foreign seems to lend you freedom to act differently than you might at home. For me, it often feels like it creates more physical space inside my body. My muscles often feel looser in other cities. When I say freedom, though, I don’t necessarily mean letting it all go, using a place as an adult playground and waking up with the worst hangover of your life. I just mean becoming a more curious person who talks more easily to strangers, someone who wastes time in the most valuable of ways. Whenever we return from someplace we’ve loved, my husband and I usually vow to keep living like we’re still there, still traveling, so the world feels just as fresh. Doing that really means living in the present, which of course you don’t have to go anywhere to practice. To do this in daily life, at least in theory, is also to write from a place of more openness, more receptiveness without judgment. Travel can help with this, but the real work must always be done at home.
GM: You grew up in Indiana in a primarily rural environment. In “Bicycles in the Corn” you say, “only among the cornfields’ copper blankness has my true self ever risen to the surface.” Moving away from the home where you found your “true self,” have you found significant changes in your writing after relocating to Chicago?
MW: I think I’ve seen the same changes in my writing that I’ve seen in myself. From my perspective, a city doesn’t allow the same space to imagine things or people as much different than they are. I know that’s the opposite of how a lot of people feel. There’s a lot of glamorizing of the urban, but my experience has been more the opposite. The open skies—the endless stretch of stars—of where I grew up simply loomed too large, and I still miss seeing bigger sunsets and farther into the distance. So my writing has become a lot more grounded—even though I realize “grounded” may not be the first thing people might call my work—since not just moving to Chicago but fully inhabiting it, not having a part of me always wanting to revisit the old, familiar feeling of home again. After going home was no longer was an option, I found I had to fully commit to the life I’d chosen. I think writing then became a way of me reconciling myself to a reality stripped of its pastoral romanticism. This somehow wedged itself deep inside me despite the isolation and the farm chores, which I never relished. But being honest, in writing and life, about the ugly things I now feel stuck with became a way of accepting them. I also found an empowerment in describing things as they are without coloring them to reflect some kind of inner fantasy. The irony, of course, is that only then could a different, rawer kind of beauty emerge.
"It's not necessarily wrong to avoid pain, but it is unwise. Just as you can't leave your body, you can't escape your pain except very temporarily. It's one thing if you find that it dissipates and you start waking up happier, but that's probably a result of having confronted, or crawled inside it."
GM: Your essays contain a crafted balance of poetic, abstract sections braided with concrete, narrative pieces of your life, but they all revolve around returning images. In “Painted Metal Bird,” objects such as the whirling dervish, lips, a spinning planet, and the McDonald’s arch return throughout the piece. Do you plan out beforehand what images will become braided in your essays, or do you let the images naturally return during your writing process, if they ever happen to?
MW: I’m not conscious of choosing images for symbolic value or anything else. Especially with the essays in this collection, I wrote without being conscious of a lot of things, without much if any critical distance from my material. All the images came directly from experience, but something in my subconscious inevitably determined how much time I spent with those images that resonated on deeper levels. The ones you mentioned—the whirling dervish, spinning planet, and even the McDonald’s arches—all have a roundness or sense of movement that feels a little redeeming to me. Any rounding of corners implies life’s evolution, ceaseless motion, wearing down of edges. It implies a pulsing of life that transcends the self and continues without regard to human circumstances. I find contemplating these kinds of things reassuring, so I must have honed in on images that offer me this kind of comfort.
GM: Shortly after your parents’ death, you wrote about your travel to France in the essay “Souvenirs.” You expressed the guilt that you felt for taking the trip during this sensitive time. In this essay, you stated, “Only now do I see the wrongness of crawling away from pain in itself.” You then say that you still crawl sometimes. Is your writing another type of crawling in which you move in and out of pain?
MW: Definitely. It’s a way for me to not only process pain but hopefully cease to create more of it. When I said, “the wrongness of crawling away from pain,” I probably overstated things. It’s not necessarily wrong to avoid pain, but it is unwise. Just as you can’t leave your body, you can’t escape your pain except very temporarily. It’s one thing if you find that it dissipates and you start waking up happier, but that’s probably a result of having confronted, or crawled inside, it. Fortunately, I didn’t develop any unhealthy dependencies while I was grieving the loss of my parents. But I have always needed an artistic outlet, even during my happiest periods. I have always needed a means of expressing pain that often didn’t have any apparent external cause. When I was growing up, I used to play the piano, for instance. A lot of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Chopin kept me sane through adolescence. I used to paint too, but now I just write. If I were completely sanguine, I might not need this. I also wouldn’t recognize this person.
GM: You are very open with your body and sexuality in “A Silent Film” and several other essays in Antlers in Space. How has writing about these subjects created a stronger and more open identity you’re able to recognize, and how has this allowed you to handle other subjects in the same way?
MW: None of us live a life outside our body. That’s just a fact. No one with a social security number functions as a completely spiritual person. No ghost goes up to a counter and orders a sandwich. There is no pure life of the mind, which to me is a good thing. Our bodies remind us of the obvious, that we’re animals, and our animal bodies redeem us. Having to leave the office for a drink of water offers a little relief from the stress or boredom of the workday. Feeling attracted to someone you spot at the grocery store allays the tedium of waiting in the checkout line. The human world is riddled with pretension, and the fact we’re animals is perhaps the only thing that saves us—or has saved us so far—from ourselves. I think that acknowledging the axiomatic—the fact that inhabiting this body means it craves pleasure and touch—allows me to approach other subjects more honestly. I’ve also always had a tendency toward being a little lofty, wanting to philosophize and make grandiloquent statements, to talk as if we’re all just functioning from the neck up, which can put people off for good reason. Abstractions aren’t real life—they can be painfully boring—and writing more candidly about the body is my way of trying to counter this vice and anchor my thoughts in physical truth.
MW: I’m not conscious of choosing images for symbolic value or anything else. Especially with the essays in this collection, I wrote without being conscious of a lot of things, without much if any critical distance from my material. All the images came directly from experience, but something in my subconscious inevitably determined how much time I spent with those images that resonated on deeper levels. The ones you mentioned—the whirling dervish, spinning planet, and even the McDonald’s arches—all have a roundness or sense of movement that feels a little redeeming to me. Any rounding of corners implies life’s evolution, ceaseless motion, wearing down of edges. It implies a pulsing of life that transcends the self and continues without regard to human circumstances. I find contemplating these kinds of things reassuring, so I must have honed in on images that offer me this kind of comfort.
GM: Shortly after your parents’ death, you wrote about your travel to France in the essay “Souvenirs.” You expressed the guilt that you felt for taking the trip during this sensitive time. In this essay, you stated, “Only now do I see the wrongness of crawling away from pain in itself.” You then say that you still crawl sometimes. Is your writing another type of crawling in which you move in and out of pain?
MW: Definitely. It’s a way for me to not only process pain but hopefully cease to create more of it. When I said, “the wrongness of crawling away from pain,” I probably overstated things. It’s not necessarily wrong to avoid pain, but it is unwise. Just as you can’t leave your body, you can’t escape your pain except very temporarily. It’s one thing if you find that it dissipates and you start waking up happier, but that’s probably a result of having confronted, or crawled inside, it. Fortunately, I didn’t develop any unhealthy dependencies while I was grieving the loss of my parents. But I have always needed an artistic outlet, even during my happiest periods. I have always needed a means of expressing pain that often didn’t have any apparent external cause. When I was growing up, I used to play the piano, for instance. A lot of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Chopin kept me sane through adolescence. I used to paint too, but now I just write. If I were completely sanguine, I might not need this. I also wouldn’t recognize this person.
GM: You are very open with your body and sexuality in “A Silent Film” and several other essays in Antlers in Space. How has writing about these subjects created a stronger and more open identity you’re able to recognize, and how has this allowed you to handle other subjects in the same way?
MW: None of us live a life outside our body. That’s just a fact. No one with a social security number functions as a completely spiritual person. No ghost goes up to a counter and orders a sandwich. There is no pure life of the mind, which to me is a good thing. Our bodies remind us of the obvious, that we’re animals, and our animal bodies redeem us. Having to leave the office for a drink of water offers a little relief from the stress or boredom of the workday. Feeling attracted to someone you spot at the grocery store allays the tedium of waiting in the checkout line. The human world is riddled with pretension, and the fact we’re animals is perhaps the only thing that saves us—or has saved us so far—from ourselves. I think that acknowledging the axiomatic—the fact that inhabiting this body means it craves pleasure and touch—allows me to approach other subjects more honestly. I’ve also always had a tendency toward being a little lofty, wanting to philosophize and make grandiloquent statements, to talk as if we’re all just functioning from the neck up, which can put people off for good reason. Abstractions aren’t real life—they can be painfully boring—and writing more candidly about the body is my way of trying to counter this vice and anchor my thoughts in physical truth.
GM: Many of these essays have themes that are overarching throughout the pieces. For example, in “The Memory of Water,” a theme we interpreted was how water sustains but also holds people back. One example we saw in “Antlers in Space” was the idea that you should not let yourself miss out on life while trying to experience everything. When you begin writing a new piece, do you think back on a specific event and build the narrative theme from there, or do you try to write out an emotion and see what themes come to mind to connect while writing?
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"Initially I wasn't trying to create anything, certainly not for others to read, but I needed to express something, to give it the smallest of lives outside me. Once I wrote that sentence or scene, I often realized there was more I had to say about it. A poetic impulse took over." |
MW: For most of my finished pieces, I’m not necessarily trying to write something that I’ll ever finish when I start them, meaning I also start a lot of things that never go anywhere. Each essay in Antlers in Space began with little more than a single sentence—sometimes a small scene—that I simply felt I had to write down. Initially I wasn’t trying to create anything, certainly not for others to read, but I needed to express something, to give it the smallest of lives outside me. Once I wrote that sentence or scene, I often realized there was more I had to say about it. A poetic impulse took over. Because my mind works tangentially, sometimes I’d start to tie the opening scene to something else entirely, and the essay would proceed from there. Once I realized I wanted to polish the piece into something whole, I’d start editing, which always takes me at least thirty times as long as the actual writing. Over the course of several years, I found I had a solid weekend hobby, which gradually evolved into more of an obsession. But there remains a strong emotional impetus behind everything I write. Without feeling that I’m going to die a little death if I don’t get this out of me, I have nothing to say.
GM: You stated in “Antlers in Space,” “I felt sure that blindness would be my penance for refusing to see all that I should.” Have there been other instances where you experienced “not seeing all you should” again in your life since this night with John?
MW: Of course. I miss important things all the time, the worst of which is probably other people’s feelings. Sometimes I tend to trample over them while trying to push myself forward, trying to get things done. I think the real grieving I experienced for my parents lasted about ten years, so since then I have become much more concerned with not wasting time. Wasting time, however, is probably best way in the world of getting to know people and what they’re really feeling. Now that I’m more motivated to make artistic progress as well as just get more things done on a daily basis, I sometimes need to remind myself to luxuriate in the presence of the people I’m lucky enough to share my life with, to do next to nothing with them and enjoy it.
GM: Your lyric essays are creatively braided together from your own life experiences, and the honesty and genuine emotion are evident throughout. In what ways did you preserve the accuracy of the relationship with your family, while transforming your memories into essays?
MW: If by “accuracy” you mean not destroying the relationships entirely, the answer is pretty easily. That’s because the only family relationship I have left is with my sister, and she is incredibly understanding. She may have her private feelings of not loving what I write—she may sometimes feel like I’m trespassing over her own memories, resurrecting pain she wishes was kept private—but she is also extremely compassionate and has never made me feel guilty for being as honest as I have been in these essays. She is just as emotional a creature as I am and has always understood that, for me to have a shot of functioning in this world, I have to express my own torrent of emotions in some way, so she allows me this. If my parents were still alive, however, I would have a much harder time writing, not only about them, but about other aspects of my life with any view to publication. They were pretty conservative, pretty private, and I always respected their feelings. I was basically a good daughter who avoided conflict. I was happier in some senses while they were living but not completely myself either. I like to think that some part of them would have understood the artistic impulse, but the truth is I probably never would have been as raw or as honest with myself if I wanted to preserve our relationship. I don’t know. All I can do now is speak to actual circumstances.
GM: Writing a collection of lyric essays allowed you to float in and out of stories as well as life experiences. Will you continue to write lyric essays in the future, or do you have plans to enter another genre?
MW: There’s an inherent playfulness to the form itself that I like, so I doubt I’ll ever stop writing them completely. But they are a lot of work, something I’m just now appreciating. I’m currently engaged in a longer, continuous piece of nonfiction that I’m finding a lot more fluid to write. It’s not an easy process by any means, but it does make me wonder why I worked so intensively in such a dense form from the starting gate. There it is, however. I also enjoy floating in and out of experiences, braiding seemingly disparate threads together, so the lyric essay gives me the ability to do what comes most naturally. Simply because we’re well suited, I’m probably stuck with the form whether anyone continues to read it or not.
GM: You stated in “Antlers in Space,” “I felt sure that blindness would be my penance for refusing to see all that I should.” Have there been other instances where you experienced “not seeing all you should” again in your life since this night with John?
MW: Of course. I miss important things all the time, the worst of which is probably other people’s feelings. Sometimes I tend to trample over them while trying to push myself forward, trying to get things done. I think the real grieving I experienced for my parents lasted about ten years, so since then I have become much more concerned with not wasting time. Wasting time, however, is probably best way in the world of getting to know people and what they’re really feeling. Now that I’m more motivated to make artistic progress as well as just get more things done on a daily basis, I sometimes need to remind myself to luxuriate in the presence of the people I’m lucky enough to share my life with, to do next to nothing with them and enjoy it.
GM: Your lyric essays are creatively braided together from your own life experiences, and the honesty and genuine emotion are evident throughout. In what ways did you preserve the accuracy of the relationship with your family, while transforming your memories into essays?
MW: If by “accuracy” you mean not destroying the relationships entirely, the answer is pretty easily. That’s because the only family relationship I have left is with my sister, and she is incredibly understanding. She may have her private feelings of not loving what I write—she may sometimes feel like I’m trespassing over her own memories, resurrecting pain she wishes was kept private—but she is also extremely compassionate and has never made me feel guilty for being as honest as I have been in these essays. She is just as emotional a creature as I am and has always understood that, for me to have a shot of functioning in this world, I have to express my own torrent of emotions in some way, so she allows me this. If my parents were still alive, however, I would have a much harder time writing, not only about them, but about other aspects of my life with any view to publication. They were pretty conservative, pretty private, and I always respected their feelings. I was basically a good daughter who avoided conflict. I was happier in some senses while they were living but not completely myself either. I like to think that some part of them would have understood the artistic impulse, but the truth is I probably never would have been as raw or as honest with myself if I wanted to preserve our relationship. I don’t know. All I can do now is speak to actual circumstances.
GM: Writing a collection of lyric essays allowed you to float in and out of stories as well as life experiences. Will you continue to write lyric essays in the future, or do you have plans to enter another genre?
MW: There’s an inherent playfulness to the form itself that I like, so I doubt I’ll ever stop writing them completely. But they are a lot of work, something I’m just now appreciating. I’m currently engaged in a longer, continuous piece of nonfiction that I’m finding a lot more fluid to write. It’s not an easy process by any means, but it does make me wonder why I worked so intensively in such a dense form from the starting gate. There it is, however. I also enjoy floating in and out of experiences, braiding seemingly disparate threads together, so the lyric essay gives me the ability to do what comes most naturally. Simply because we’re well suited, I’m probably stuck with the form whether anyone continues to read it or not.
Follow Melissa Wiley on Twitter @HeyMelissaWiley
Read Melissa Wiley's published essays online at her website: http://www.antlersinspace.com/essays.html
Read Melissa Wiley's published essays online at her website: http://www.antlersinspace.com/essays.html