Inscape Journal: What was it like for you to realize that you needed to write such a private emotional narrative in Dear Damage?
Ashley Farmer: When the initial situation happened with my grandparents, that first essay involved what was later called a mercy killing, but that situation is when it happened. I had some awareness that I would write about it and part of it was because I had already told my grandparents I wanted to write about them. I was really close to them growing up, at least for part of my life near them, and I had this wonderful, tight rapport with the both of them. And so a few weeks before that incident happened, I had been at their house, it was right after New Year’s, and we were just kind of hanging out in their living room. I was interviewing them on the phone asking them questions about their lives. I had done that when I was a kid too, I was sort of always wanting to capture things or chronicle things. I’m the person in my family that is into that, so I had recordings from different times in my life where I would sit around, bend their ears, and ask them questions.
I knew I wanted to when I was living in California. I knew I wanted to write about them and their experience in LA as a contrast to my own when I had lived there as a younger adult. There were a couple of different times I had in LA, so all of that being said, it was already something I wanted to write about. I wanted to tell some story about their life and then this situation happened that was really surprising and devastating. I kind of knew when it happened that it was gonna be something I would write about. I didn’t know how or when or if I would tell it straight or not.
IJ: A lot of our readers are also up and coming authors. What advice do you have for people looking to start writing, both in general and in nonfiction?
AF: Finding the work you admire most, that speaks to you, and that lights you up—the kinds of writing that spark something inside you. Finding those voices and those works and even revisiting them, studying them. I think a lot comes out of emulation: looking at moves that certain writers make and very deliberately trying to just do it yourself. I’ve learned so much from that process and to this day, there’s certain books I’ll pick up again and look at. I’ve already read them many times, but making a study of the people that are your people is so valuable. I don’t think it has to be a daily practice. There’s wisdom around a regular routine, but I think touching your work on a regular basis, just opening up that file, messing around with it, playing around with it, moving things around, reading it out loud adds up to something. If you just stay with it, you end up having a project, having a book.
I think finding another writer or two that you can build a relationship with is super valuable. You want people to share your work with, writers who understand what you’re trying to do, who can see the brightest spots in your vision, who can hear your voice (and help you see that clearly), and who can give you honest feedback.
IJ: What books or authors have influenced your writing?
AF: I go back to poetry a lot because fundamentally, I really love a piece with interesting choices writers make on a sentence level. I love seeing what happens with words when you bang certain ones against each other. I think poets are really great at surprise, so there are people I go back to like Terrance Hayes, James Tate, and Russell Edson. Sylvia Plath was an early influence of being out in terms of how she works with poetry, but also really personal kind of narratives about her own life. I always come back to poets.
IJ: Often in writing, we learn more about ourselves. What has your journey of self-discovery looked like through writing?
AF: I knew when I was writing about some heavy subject matter so personal that there would be something intense about it. It’s hard to write about things like death and accidents. All that stuff is heavy, so I knew if I were going to tackle that, I wanted to make some part of it fun, or I just wouldn’t stick with it. The fun doesn’t translate to the content at all, but I thought I could infuse the process for myself with a kind of tinkering that I enjoy, like being a mechanic or something. Like, oh, I’m gonna try this in second person. Have I written anything from that perspective before? I’m going to try this time. It was fun to do that.
And similarly, with the different sort of cut outs of the public comments and even the interviews themselves. Editing those and figuring out what to select and how to place things a lot felt like building a poem. Seeing how things sit next to each other and if there is a longer through line that I’m trying to make happen. Is there some element of surprise or interest or even moments of levity or breathing room or space? Because again, pretty heavy weighty subject matter. I felt like something needed to balance it, both for my own personal process of writing it and then hopefully for the reader too. Maybe it starts in a heavy place, but then maybe more interesting things happen. There’s some counterbalance.
IJ: How have you thought of accurately portraying the truth when you’re sorting through your memories?
AF: Every nonfiction writer navigates a little bit differently. I really wanted to get things right. I wanted to be sure the order of events was really correct. When something traumatic happens, or when you’re grieving, memory gets kind of scrambled. Time stops. Things are weird. I really did my level best to get the facts correct. Once I did that, I felt like I had some freedom to then work with this more personal, subjective truth. I thought when I started writing about these circumstances, I would maybe arrive at a really solid conclusion about what I think or feel. Through the process of writing, it just revealed to me that so many things in my life are not black and white. There’s just so much grey area and that is, I think, where I landed in this book.
IJ: How has writing nonfiction shaped your view of memory?
AF: I’m all the more interested in collecting stories of the people around me and I feel it. It’s funny, I feel really grateful that I got to make a book about my grandparents. You can write something, but it’s just never a sure thing if it will become an actual object or book in the world. I’m very interested in collecting more from other members of my family who are open to doing that with me. I don’t know if I will write a book like this again. I don’t know if I’ll work with interviews the same way again or have occasion to. I feel like this was its own thing that just sort of happened. That said, I do think my attention to certain details of day-to-day life has changed. I pay attention a little bit differently as a result of trying to recreate the past in as much detail as I can. I notice things like music and current events that are happening alongside personal family events.
IJ: What’s next for you?
AF: I’m working on stories, I really love writing short fiction. I think it’s really fun, and also after writing nonfiction it’s really fun to make stuff up. You just put a character there and you want them to go to the beach. They go to the beach. You want them to fall in love. They fall in love. It’s really fun to work in fiction again and to be imaginative and play around. I’ve had a collection of stories I’ve been working on for a long time, just kind of chipping away like one at a time, and I just finished one the other day. I’m also working on a novel, which is something I’ve never done before, and it is a cool thing to be playing around with. It’s kind of slow going, but it’s also interesting because I haven’t done it before. So I’m working on those two things and bouncing back and forth between things.
IJ: After all the work you’ve written and been influenced by, what do you think is the message you would like to leave behind if you had two weeks left to live?
AF: In the scheme of things, life is really short. I would encourage every person to find some way of being creative. Everybody has something to make and add to the world. During that little bit of time they are here, I would encourage people to find what that is for them, whatever it might be. There are thousands of ways to be a creative person who makes a little something and puts it into the world. I think it is a powerful way of showing love for the people around you. And for this little moment of time that you get to be a part of, it’s maybe something that will last when you are no longer here.
