How did you get into writing? Do you remember your first piece of writing?
My first bit of writing happened one day after either preschool or kindergarten (if it’s possible for a person to learn to read and write too early in life, that’s what happened with me). It was a passive-aggressive letter to my mother (I wasn’t talking to her that day) about a field trip to a farm. There was a tree that’d been struck by lightning and hollowed out, and I’d stood inside it. Later, I went through a phase of writing a newspaper for my family; then I wrote an unfortunate poem about a PE teacher and got in trouble for it; and after that, I won an award for a short story in sixth grade–something about a babysitter who slips on ice and breaks her wrist. In high school, I wrote bad poems to make my friends laugh (I wish I still had those). After high school, I wrote some ill-conceived editorials for a punk zine. So I was always writing, I guess, but when I was 23, I read Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in an afternoon, and for about a week afterward, I could hear the main character’s voice in my head, narrating my walks to and from work. I thought that was an amazing thing, that someone could write a voice and make it live in a reader’s head for an indeterminate amount of time. That made me dive into fiction writing.
Your work is often gritty and incorporates dark humor. Where do you get your inspiration for your stories?
When I’ve been asked this before, I spitball for a while and stall, but I’ll cut to the chase. I sit down to write, and I wait until I hear a voice. When I hear a voice, I start writing it down. That sounds weirder than it is, I hope. The voices mostly talk about and do things that I’ve experienced, directly or indirectly. Things that have affected me in some way. All the characters I write are probably slices of myself, little pieces of my brain that don’t coexist well. And then there’s setting. I often start writing by thinking, “Where would I rather be for the next couple of years?” Then I go there in my head and hunker down. All of this sounds super healthy.
Dark humor is my jam, for sure. I was raised, in large part, by a herd of elderly grandparents and great-grandparents, and, in having lived quite a while, they’d been through rough stuff. Dark humor was a means of survival, and I picked up on its usefulness early. As far as the grittiness goes, I’m probably a little gritty. A little rough around the edges. Not in a dangerous way, I hope, but no one has ever accused me of being elegant. I suspect some of the grit comes from being perpetually broke and raised by people who, when I fell down, told me to get up and walk it off. Rub some dirt on it. I’m not advocating for that; sometimes you should probably go to a doctor; but that was formative. It stuck.
Regarding your latest book, Little Underworld, which is based in 1930s Omaha, what’s your process for historical fiction?
That was a weird one. I guess writing is always weird. It all started because I’m a sucker for genealogy. One of that herd of elderly people I mentioned, a great-grandpa, had a couple of uncles who were… Let’s call them “colorful.” Actually, his whole lineage was very colorful. So I got swept up in reading bizarre old newspaper articles, to the point that I was having dreams set in 1928 (the book was originally set in 1928).
I think that growing up with a lot of “primary sources” was why I was drawn to the period, and then my process was obsessive “research.” I put “research” in air quotes because it wasn’t that formal. I missed having that elderly herd around, so I obsessively read about them (and about their relatives I never knew) in old newspapers and other records. It was a way of staying connected (and of digging through their dirty laundry sometimes, since a lot of my grandparents had that reticent rural Nebraska thing about them. The ones who didn’t had the attitude of “snitches get stitches”).
Old newspapers, vital records at the state historical society, books about the period–stuff like that gave me a sense of people’s attitudes and day-to-day lives. But maybe more important were old photos. I’ve somehow ended up with a lot of old pictures, and then the Durham Museum in Omaha has a gigantic collection. I spent a lot of time staring into pictures, looking at the details until I felt like I was right there inside.
And then I’d zoom out, too. I periodically reminded myself of what was going on in the bigger picture at the time, in Omaha, in the US, in the world. That was why the book shifted to the spring of 1930. Omaha’s long-time mayor had died, an election was coming up, and a suspect in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (who I’m pretty positive had nothing to do with it) had narrowly escaped arrest. I thought a lot about the historical narratives surrounding Prohibition and about the lack of evidence to support most of those narratives.
I always bristle at the term “historical fiction” because I’m always like, “Aren’t we living in a moment in time right now? Isn’t all fiction, unless it’s set in some kind of alternate universe, ‘historical?'” But I think fiction, made-up as it may be, can subtly undermine the way we simplify “history” to a linear narrative that doesn’t show how a lot of people experienced a specific moment. I think fiction can also remind people of facts that popular historical narratives brush under the rug–though, for me, those were mostly jabs and winks. Mostly, I focus on the people in the story and what they’re going through and dealing with.
What writers inspire you the most?
Well, I mentioned Patrick McCabe already. He’s a big one. I love a lot of the usual suspects. I love some Faulkner, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ellison, Joyce, Vonnegut, Baldwin, Oates, Carver. Patricia Highsmith. James Welch. Irvine Welsh. Chitra Divakaruni. I think Hawthorne and Melville were way funnier than they’re given credit. Toni Cade Bambera, Richard Ford, Kent Haruf. John Cheever’s “Death of Justina” kills me. George Saunders. Oh! Wright Morris. Percival Everett. This is pretty stream of consciousness, and I could go on for days, but all of them have either provoked me to sit down and write or have shown me a way something can be pulled off. They’ve given me something to aspire to, I guess.
Do you have a writing routine or any methods that you use?
Silence. I listen to a lot of music when I’m not writing and the mood of what I’ve been listening to soaks through when I am writing. If I need to get into a character’s head, I’ll listen to an album or a song. Everybody’s got a soundtrack. But when I actually write, I can’t listen to anything.
If I have a break from working (not writing-working but working-working), I’ll binge-write from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. And then I’m a big fan of taking a break, once a draft is done or if I’m stuck. I pay attention to everything else outside of my head for a while. I’ll fix or build something, watch movies or TV, let the story simmer in my subconscious. When I go back to the writing, I can generally see what needs to happen.
Then, when I get into the homestretch of revision, I make sure I have a chunk of about nine days, just me and a lot of coffee, and I wake up every morning and start from the beginning. About day seven, I can probably get through the whole book in a day, and then I read through it a couple of times over two days or so, making minor tweaks or getting the rhythms of syllables right.
What inspires your writing?
There was this episode of Dog Whisperer where someone asked Cesar Millan to help stop a dog from licking a lawnmower. The dog just obsessively licked this lawn mower. Cesar Millan told the person, “This dog has no purpose. So the dog has made licking the lawn mower his purpose.” It was a watershed moment for me. I realized: I am that dog and writing is my lawn mower.
I mean, I also do it to entertain myself and to get away from everything, so avoidance is a big factor. But then my subconscious brain won’t let me avoid everything, so I wind up working through some mess that’s been going on in my head.
And I’m always trying to understand why people do the things they do. I think we all act organically, according to who we are in a specific moment. Whatever we are and whatever that moment is–I mean, that’s getting into chaos theory, and whatever my brain comes up with isn’t that complex. But I feel like I can get glimpses into those big “why” questions. Or reminders to empathize, at least.
And then movies and great TV shows inspire me, too. When I’m writing, I’m watching a movie of the whole thing in my head. I don’t know how it’s going to end; that’s what keeps me going. I seem to like a lot of movies that do tricky balancing acts with beauty and horror or humor and darkness, so that’s something I try to do. One of my more recent favorites is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. I held off on watching it for a long time because, for one, I knew it was Daniel Day-Lewis’s swan song (supposedly), and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Daniel Day-Lewis. For another, I mean, it looked like it was just a movie about a designer. The trailer couldn’t reveal much, so I wasn’t sure there was much to it. But I finally watched it one night, and I swear I held my breath for two hours and however many minutes. As soon as it ended, I was stunned, wide-eyed, and I laughed–like a loud snort-laugh. I immediately rewatched it. Once you know the story, it’s so brutally funny the second time through. I started it a third time, but it was four in the morning, and I needed to sleep. No Country for Old Men was the same way.
What is the hardest thing about writing, and how do you work through it?
Finding the time is the hardest part for me, but that’s not something I can really work through. I just have to create time when it’s financially possible, usually by making fiscally unsound decisions. But as far as the process goes, probably patience. I’m a pretty patient, methodical person by nature, but sometimes waiting for a lightbulb to go off in my brain can be taxing. Which actually goes back to the financial thing. I think having to take time away, to make money for groceries and utility bills and whatnot, winds up helping. Not in an ideal way. My ideal way to work through that stuff is to go on really, really long walks and build or fix things. Doing something physical seems to balance out the quagmire of my brain.
Are you working on anything currently?
I am not! So, I’m a miserable jerk right now, but I’m also somebody whose brain-well needs to refill between projects. And I have plenty to keep me busy while I wait for stuff to accumulate.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
A lot of people think they’re done with a piece of writing before they are. And I get it; I was super skeptical about revision for a long time, too. I thought my early drafts were works of spontaneous genius that, if tampered with, would lose what was brilliant about them. I have since learned that I do not make works of spontaneous genius or brilliance. Maybe a few people do, but I don’t, and most writers I know don’t. So my advice is to rewrite and revise until you have a breakthrough (one that feels a lot like a breakdown–that’s when you know you’ve got a good draft, I think), and then revise the sentences until you can’t stand looking at the things anymore.
About the Author
Chris Harding Thornton, a seventh-generation Nebraskan, holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a PhD from the University of Nebraska, where she has taught literature and writing courses. She has also worked as a quality assurance overseer at a condom factory, a jar-lid screwer at a plastics plant, a closer at Burger King, a clerk at a record store, a manager at an all-ages club, and a PR writer. Her first novel, Pickard County Atlas (MCD/FSG), was chosen by author Tana French (In the Woods, The Searcher) as a PBS Masterpiece Best Mystery of 2021. The book was also featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. It was released in paperback (Picador) and appeared in German translation (Polar Verlag) in 2022. Her second novel, Little Underworld (MCD/FSG), was released in March 2024.
