What an author chooses for a dedication or epigraph is always so fascinating to me. Madwoman is dedicated to your mother, “who lives in every line.” You include a portrait of her, which feels so intimate, as though the reader might recognize something in her gaze, her expression. Can you share how you chose the quotes that introduce the novel, and what the dedication to your mother means to you (and what you hope it might mean to readers)? ​

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The book could only be dedicated to her. It’s all about a woman desperately wanting to be known by her mother. I too felt desperate to be known by my mother and exhausted from all the ways male violence made that impossible. That’s it—that’s what the book is about. How male violence comes between women. My mother couldn’t be a mother because she was under the thumb of a total and complete control system that dominated everything. It’s a tough truth that no one wants to look at. They want to be like oh, she chose a life of addiction. I mean…why can’t we look at the missing piece? But, you know, DV wasn’t even criminalized until relatively recently. 

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The quote that opens the book is from her journal. I had a W.S. Merwin quote for awhile only because she had sent me the poem Separation once in a letter. But when it came down to it I decided that her words were enough. No need for another voice to supplement it. She writes, prays, that I won’t end up motherless like her. It’s from an entry where she knows something terrible is coming. She is fearing for her life. She was a beautiful writer in her journals. She gave me permission to use her words in the epigraph. She wanted me to read her journals even though they are traumatic to read. She wanted to be known and she wanted the truth known. I understand the feeling expressly. 

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Clove is a mother of two with a degree in creative writing. She hasn’t written much at all since becoming a mother, until a letter arrives from the Central California Women’s Facility. This line struck me: “The thing about motherhood was that everything was happening all the time.” How do the demands of motherhood influence your own writing?

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Motherhood touches every part of my life. My kids are always on my mind, and when I’m away from them I feel the thread connecting us strained and it’s uncomfortable. I couldn’t have wrapped my head around that prior to becoming a mother. I love this essay by Claudia Dey which says it all perfectly. You just can’t know how deep it runs. I’m sensitive too. My experiences as a kid inform the kind of parent I am and the sorts of bonds I want to have with them. Part of that means I really show up to everything. That means a lot to me. But even if I’m at a residency (only done that once) or having a mini writing retreat, I really have to work to let go of my anxiety of not being with them. I can do it, but it’s not easy. I recognize that this is a phase of life that will change like everything else. One day they will be adults. It won’t mean I won’t worry any more. But you know, it will just redefine itself. There won’t be so many practical negotiations of who’s taking care of who. Right now I’m considering my answers to you with the din of my kids playing in the background. I think in early motherhood I was panicked that I’d never write again and so I wrote under the most insane conditions with little sleep and all the things. Now I require more ease, and I guess I’ve earned that. My oldest is ten. I need more spaciousness now, longer stretches of quiet, but when they were little that was not possible for me. Some people have their moms around to help or can afford a nanny and that just wasn’t my story at all. Motherhood is so under-supported in our society, too. It’s very easy to feel isolated in it. But even still, I love it. It can be so damn hard, but I love being a mother and an artist. It feels really redemptive to me. My kids bring me closest to the fundamental essence of love that we all are. When I’m with them, I’m like, oh yeah, shit on the internet doesn’t matter. That (whatever marker of success) doesn’t really matter. What that person thinks of me definitely doesn’t matter. Love matters. I would have at one time thought that was cheesy, but now I see it as the most fully expanded version of me possible. Loving myself, loving others. Being a part of this great cycle of birthing, and caring, and loving, and creating. That’s what I want to touch in my lifetime. 

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You write a fantastic Substack called “Make Up Your Life”. On it earlier this year you shared that Madwoman “feels like the deepest and most emotional thing I’ve ever written” and that “there was so much intensive exploration going on—of self, of the past, tearing apart the stories I’d told myself, and getting closer to the capital T truth of things.” As a writer, how do you decide what material from real life to use in your fiction, and how does the idea of an audience affect how much or how little you choose to include?

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It's all blended and nearly impossible to parse out what’s “real” and what’s not real. I’m writing from an emotional truth at all times. I thought it was funny that some people thought my first novel Godshot was a memoir. But maybe it read that way, I don’t know. I wasn’t personally in a religious birthing cult as a teenager. I didn’t have a baby at fifteen. I didn’t personally have a pastor who wore golden robes. But it’s all representative. I did grow up in the Baptist church and absorbed the wonky ass messages about women there. I did experience abuse and neglect as a child and that novel deals with that. With Madwoman, no, my mom didn’t go to prison for murdering my father. The plot of Madwoman is wild! These big things didn’t happen to me, but the seeds of all of it is true to my heart. And then some stuff is real but few people would ever know. Some of my family reads my work but we don’t have terribly in-depth conversations about it. I don’t always know what they think and I’m fine with that. Family is hard. It’s like, just tell me you liked it, and if you didn’t, keep that to yourself. But I imagine it’s emotional in different ways for them. I had one family member who had a very strong reaction to my short story collection and disowned me and said she hated me. I thought this was plain awful that she did that, but in some way I understood. She’s not a reader, she didn’t understand what it was she was reading, and the stories brought up uncomfortable feelings for her, and she didn’t want to have those feelings and sort of directed that anger at me. She saw herself in the stories in ways I could have never predicted because art is inherently confronting. You can’t predict how art will jar someone. Honestly losing that person felt weird in the moment, but in truth she wasn’t a part of my life and hadn’t been for decades. It was sort of like okay. I feel for her because we’re part of the same lineage of trauma, and I get it. But it will never change what I write or how I write it. I write with the highest love and intention for all in mind always, and I could really drag some people, but I generally do not. People think my work is dark. But oh, it could be so much darker. I’m actually really quite nice in my work. I’m interested in the ways art can challenge the wild ways family systems protect abusers. I’m so fucking tired of that! That essay from Munro’s daughter Andrea Skinner was so stunning. I was like, fuck yes, tell this story. It’s the anecdote to shame. 

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The novel has such a cinematic quality to it—I’m excited to see this adapted into a miniseries or movie. I’m curious if you ever think of that while writing, the idea of your work being adapted to the screen, and if so does it affect how you write scenes or what you include?

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Thank you! I take these walks where I play music that reminds me of the project and I just watch my mind movie. So I see everything very cinematically. I too am waiting for someone to make my work into a movie. Let’s light a candle for that. 

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So much is discussed about the writing of a novel; I'm eager to hear about how the editing process was for you, and how it feels as a writer to have other hands touch your project. 

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I just know when something isn’t working or could be better. It’s just a sense. I know it, and it’s up to me to fix it. An editor can point out blind spots. I have a really amazing writing group I share everything with and I trust them implicitly. I trust them to ask great questions, and to be like, yes, you’re doing it. But I do believe we all know the truth of our own work. It’s a problem when too many cooks are in the kitchen. You have to hone a self-intimacy and self-trust above all. With Madwoman, lots was cut. A good agent will prompt the right questions. Because the book can start out as one thing, and mid way, reveal itself to be another. But I love when that happens. When the project itself turns around and tells me what it’s about. Chills. I live for that.

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Which books (or movies, articles, etc.) impacted you while writing Madwoman? 

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I tried to touch base with the stories of my childhood where I felt the most understood and my favorite movie as a kid was Sleeping with the Enemy. The woman escapes her abuser in the end. Me and my mom cheered. It was hugely impactful, because it helped me know what we were experiencing was not okay, and also that other ways to live could exist. I also read all of Lenore E. Walker’s work on domestic violence which was pioneering for the 70s, and I think Animal by Lisa Taddeo helped me to really feel into female rage and to feel fearless on the page. That novel doesn’t hold back at all. That’s the kind of book I want to always be reading. 

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As a follow up, can you recommend three books either similar in tone or content that a reader might enjoy after finishing Madwoman?

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Animal by Lisa Taddeo, The Push by Ashley Audrain, and Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen. 

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I want to talk a bit about what promoting your work as a writer in this specific moment of time feels like. Writers twenty years—even a decade—ago didn’t have to deal with the immediate opinion of readers and critics, while simultaneously having to promote their work online. Was there ever a hesitation to engage with your audience on platforms like Instagram and Substack? What is your relationship to this connection?

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Hmm. I envy writers of yore who didn’t have this added layer honestly. I think for the most part, social media becomes a huge distraction and barrier to creativity at its worst, and at its best, sure, we can connect in a great ways, and meet people we wouldn’t otherwise but I’m suspect about it in terms of actual creative process. I really have to go through times of totally not logging on at all because I start to just have these images and voices in my head. I have to connect back with myself. What do I really like? When I take it away suddenly I’m much more creative on every level. Even what I wear feels more clear. I’m wearing what I like versus what I’m being told to like. That said, it’s beautiful that I can have a direct line to readers. That is incredibly special to me. Substack is really cool and I love it the most actually. I’m newer to it but it’s like old school blogging but better. I want to take in and make deeper content. I hate now how everything on Instagram is a video. I want to see an image and read about it. I don’t want these clips. Whatever. At the same time I participate in it because that’s what I can control myself and I do think that we can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. It’s just a part of it now. If someone is going to publish me, I’m going to do everything I can to amplify that. I try to ask myself how can I do this authentically to me? How can I share messages I really care about it? It has to feel aligned. But sometimes I fantasize of being a writer in the age of Kate Braverman and Mary Gaitskill. The age of the physical fan letter a rave NYT review leading to massive sales. I also have concerns about art being dictated by the consumer which should never ever happen but is happening. Art should always be setting the tone. Not the other way around. But I think social media makes it possible for everyone to have a platform and say. Is this a good thing? I really don’t know.

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I feel like this might be a fitting question to end with: What does the beginning of a project typically look like for you? How do you know when to follow an idea? What excites you most about writing fiction?

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Each book has looked a bit different. With my newest novel I’m currently writing, I felt the strong sense to journal and “collect” and “take it on walks” every day, but not sit down in front of the Word doc yet (or Scrivener in this case). I was in a phase of visualizing, of connecting dots, and following impulse. This period lasted a few months and then I sat down to start writing it last September. I am a writer who really trusts the process of once I feel that heat of a bigger story, then I know more will follow if I remain open. Maybe people want a more technical answer but I don’t have one. It takes a lot of blind faith. A dash of delusion. A bit of swagger.