Setting (Non-Punitive) Goals and a Conversation with Fiction Writer and Artist Sue Mell

Sue's new book is the story collection A NEW DAY

Today’s post is a twofer: a few words about goal-setting and dates for upcoming online Bookish meetings, followed by a conversation with novelist, short story writer, and visual artist Sue Mell. 📗

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Vitamin Z doses (i.e. goal-setting sessions on Zoom - October 6 and November 2)

I’m never been a NaNoWriMo participant (National Novel Writing Month, i.e. November). I feel conflicted about its emphasis on word count over substance and craft, but I’ll suppress my inner curmudgeon: these thirty-day writing sprees can lead to fine work—fellow Substacker

TaraShea Nesbit

’s award-winning novel The Wives of Los Alamos was written during NaNoWriMo.

Each year when the calendar inches toward November, I think about my own writing practice. Unlike Stephen King, I don’t write 2,000 words a day. I set a friendlier goal of 500 words, or 1,000 if I’m on a break from teaching.

Sticking with a manuscript through the shallows and the storms requires self-knowledge and the ability to set goals that won’t doom you from the outset to a freak-out or paralysis. I don’t write every day of the year, but I do write on more days than not. I can’t remember who said it, but I think of this often, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a bat.”

With all this in mind, I’ve scheduled a goal-setting and info session on Zoom for monthly and annual subscribers on Sunday, October 6, 2 PM PT/4 PM CT. Bring your literary questions and share writing goals for the weeks ahead. (Please RSVP with a note in the comments or email me, and I’ll send you the link.)

A second fall meetup will take place on the second day of NaNoWriMo, Saturday, November 2, (9:30 AM PT/11:30 AM CT. We can share the outcome of our October goals and/or set new ones (NaNoWriMo-related or otherwise). I’ll also answer publishing & writing questions, time permitting.

Subscriptions are currently discounted. A preview of the September agent list can be accessed here (these lists are paywalled, but most Bookish posts are free).

And now, the interview with Sue Mell:

Sue’s debut story collection, A New Day, was published on September 3. When I read it in July, I tried to take my time, not wanting it to end (I was not successful—in fact, I took it in greedily!)

An illustration by Sue Mell (more on this below)

Christine/Bookish: Many of the stories in A New Day are intensely romantic, in the best possible sense. There's so much desire in your characters and the suspense generated by their desires propels the various interlocking narratives forward. Would you talk a little about how this book began? 

Sue Mell: I didn’t start writing fiction until my early fifties, and the first stories I wrote were ones I’d been carrying around forever. Drawn from my own experience and the lives of people I’d known in my twenties, they reflected a particular era of young adulthood in 1980s New York. A scramble to find love, a creative career, and a good apartment. Five appeared in Narrative Magazine between 2010 - 2012, and I thought I was well on my way to a collection.

I wasn’t thinking about connected narratives then, just about writing enough good stories to fill a book. But once I’d used up that stash of material, I hit a wall. I hoped grad school would break it down, but I continued to struggle. At a loss midway through, I returned to a character from one of those early stories, imagining his life thirty years later, after the death of his wife. And what began as a story became the start of Provenance, a novel that would absorb my attention for the next few years, the idea of publishing a story collection left behind.

But then in 2020, when I’d finished and was sending Provenance around, starting something completely new was as daunting as ever, and I still wished I could give those earlier stories a second life. So I took the same tack, imagining where the other main characters might’ve landed later in life and love, and giving some of the minor ones their own stories and trajectories—essentially handing my problem of starting over to them, and working toward a more cohesive collection.

Bookshop.org link

CS: A number of your characters are visual artists—photographers, painters, sculptors. You write very knowledgeably about artmaking.  Are you also an artist?

SM: It feels funny to say yes because I’m not making anything now. But I do have a BA in ceramics and painting, and worked as a freelance illustrator for around seven years, doing greeting cards and lifestyle pieces for newspapers and magazines.

Since my twenties, I’ve also worked on and off in commercial photography, first assisting photographers, then prop and soft goods stylists, and eventually becoming a soft goods stylist myself. That’s the person who makes bedding and anything else fabric-related look good for home décor catalogues and websites like Williams-Sonoma.

Illustrations by Sue Mell (Sue's IG: @suemellwrites)

I hadn’t done any painting for almost a decade, and then two years ago, when Provenance was coming out, I wound up having the opportunity to do the cover art. It wasn’t like riding a bicycle, but I was really happy with the result, which made for a rewarding—and very A New Day-ish—full circle.

CS: Rachel, Emma, and Nina are the three focal characters in A New Day, each with romantic foibles, questionable attachments, and resulting confusions. Their stories take place in New York and San Francisco, and as you alluded to above, the timeline begins in the 1980s and ends in the 2010s. What spurred you to work within this broad range of years and follow three characters rather than one? (I'm also wondering if Olive Kitteridge and A Visit from the Goon Squad are among your influences.)

Provenance, Sue’s debut novel

SM: A Visit from the Goon Squad is one of my favorite books—I don’t know why I didn’t look to it when I was working on A New Day. But I did read and admire Egan’s Emerald City when I started writing fiction, so you could count her stories as an early influence.

The broad range reflects my own floundering across those years, figuring out who I was—and what I could still accomplish—versus who I’d hoped I might be. There’s a kind of reckoning—a coming to terms (or not) with your life—that can only take place across time.

And after spending years writing and revising a novel that’s told from a single third-person point of view, I craved the freedom of multiple perspectives, and the opportunity for contrasts and parallels between them. I’d also just read Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, which granted me the permission I needed to use a collage-like format, which I’d loved working within, in other mediums.

CS: Who/what are some of your literary and artistic/musical influences?

SM: At the root is a classic trio of Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, and JD Salinger. Writers whose work I was devoted to long before I thought of making my own. Amy Hempel and Elizabeth Tallent would be in there too. Antonya Nelson’s Female Trouble and Robert Boswell’s The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards were pivotal collections once I started writing.

But while writing the later stories in A New Day—with the notion it could add up to more than just the sum of its parts—I kept a few books close. Alice Mattison’s In Case We’re Separated and Amy Bloom’s Where the God of Love Hangs Out, both collections with interlocking stories, but Bloom’s in particular for its emotional complexity. The Glass Hotel, as mentioned before. And because to me it’s a perfect book, Joan Silber’s Improvement for sheer inspiration.

I’m a sucker for a good hook in any musical genre and have been accused of liking any song with jingle-jangly guitars—so ‘80s music holds a lasting sway. But overall, for his brilliant lyrics and expressive vocals, I’d say Elvis Costello is king.

As for visual art, the Post-Impressionists and Fauvist painters, especially Paul Cézanne, Raoul Dufy, and Franz Marc, for their use of color and a narrative quality to their work. Wayne Thiebaud and Saul Steinberg are more contemporary favorites.

Sue Mell (credit: John Bessler)

CS: What are you working on now? 

SM: Nonfiction, mostly. Very short essays and vignettes from my daily life, which includes being a caregiver for my now 95-year-old mom. I don’t think I have a full-fledged memoir in me, but maybe another chapbook.

Final note:

Sue will be doing a joint release party/public reading with Megan Staffel, Debra Spark, and Cynthia Reeves on Saturday, October 26, 6 - 9 PM, Midden Hospitality, 102 Franklin Street, 3rd Floor, Manhattan.