By Liz Gómez
I had the incredible privilege to interview Rita Chun, who is the author of the upcoming Wilde Press novella TwoSpanTime. Her kindness, passion for writing, and talent for words shone in each response—each word and sentence—to the questions I asked. In a little less than an hour, she gave me glimpses into the nuanced, emotion-filled, funny, witty, happy, sad, strange, relatable, and thought-provoking worlds of her stories. No number of words, questions, or answers, however, can fully paint the beautiful picture of TwoSpanTime; you’ll just have to read it to understand the genius of Rita Chun.
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LIZ
When did you first encounter poetry or prose? What was the piece? Did it, directly or indirectly, influence TwoSpanTime?
RITA CHUN
The first story I ever liked was Stella Luna. It made me want to draw pictures and write stories. It’s about a bat, and I really like animal stories. It’s really wholesome. “Urban Spelunking” has a bat in it, so maybe there’s a connection there. I’m not sure, though.
LIZ
How did TwoSpanTime begin? As a thought? A poem? A creative writing assignment?
RITA CHUN
The first story [“The Myth of Disappearing”] was just after I broke up with my ex. I was also in Korea, and I was inspired by its myths about tigers. It put me in the mood to write. Old people go through a lot. They are at the end of their candle wick, living out the rest of their days. You have till the end of your days to live. The grey woman doesn’t want to be forgotten; she wants to live again. “The Last Neanderthal” was part of a workshop piece. When I was in Ireland, I wrote the other stories; I knitted “The Myth of Disappearing,” “The Last Neanderthal,” and them all together. When I am in a mood, it translates to when I write. I see a connection that some other people may not see.
LIZ
What, then, was the evolution of the piece? Did it grow organically—easily? Or was it hard to expand upon it?
RITA CHUN
It was difficult. I wanted it to seem organic. In the beginning, I didn’t have that many stories. The second section [of the novella] didn’t exist. I kept adding stories. Then, I had to rearrange them so many times to make them significant. I added easter eggs and words that repeat; the first time they are used had to be significant. “The Myth of Disappearing” was originally at the end because it was dense and philosophical. I wanted the fun stuff to come first.
LIZ
From reading your author’s extract, you mention how a creative writing class that you took in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, inspired you to write many of the scenes of TwoSpanTime. Could you talk about that more? How did the landscape of this village in Ireland and the Burren help bring your story to life?
RITA CHUN
Most of the stories were written there. When I was there, I was extremely attuned to the wind and the sound of nothing. It felt like everything was connected, and it was really intense. The feeling of connectedness helped me create stories and put them together. It helped me make sense of my experiences and output them as fiction. Fiction is an art form; any artform is expressing something that you can’t through conversation. But where I was there, I missed the city. I felt like I was going crazy. I was in the middle of nowhere!
LIZ
What was your writing routine for TwoSpanTime? Did you have any rituals to help get you into the right mindset?
RITA CHUN
I wrote most of it in the writing program. We had a lot of time to write. I mostly wrote this in the dining room and the little sunroom at the place we stayed in. I tried writing outside. When I was on the grass, I felt like there were bugs on me. It wasn’t comfortable. My back hurt! I wrote the stories on my computer; I wrote the poems on paper because writing poems is a very fast process. Writing a story is a long-run thing; if you wrote a story on paper, your body would give out before your mind.
LIZ
Which narrative of the story—i.e. the grandmother teaching her grandson the difference between sound and noise, the “grey woman” and a tiger searching for her fingers, or the woman traveling through some narrow tunnels in NYC—was the most difficult to write? Why? Which narrative was the easiest?
RITA CHUN
The easiest was “Yesterday’s Manhattan.” That one just flowed. It was inspired by a newspaper article that I read a year before. Leslie Marmon Silko had a quote where she said, something along the lines of, being a writer does not require genius. It’s a matter of catching up on yesterday’s news. This helped me feel better about writing a story based on a real-life event.
The hardest was “Urban Spelunking.” I had an idea. When I initially wrote it out, it was very bare bones. There was nothing stylistically to it. I had to go back and add the graffiti, the cell phone with the moon wallpaper, and other parts. That story was the more vulnerable one to write.
LIZ
Which character in TwoSpanTime did you have the most fun writing? Which character was the most difficult to understand?
RITA CHUN
The grey woman was the most fun to write because I like writing in that archaic, weird tone. It’s such a common thing in workshops to avoid fancier, purple prose writing. But it allowed me to write the other grey woman stories, “Manic Pixie Forest Girls,” and “Urban Spelunking.”
None of the characters were particularly hard to write. I felt like I understood all them. The boy was somewhat hard. While I felt what his character was feeling, I couldn’t make his emotions logical. I was almost forcing the boy to speak; it was getting the character out of his shell.
LIZ
Was it difficult to write in so many different perspectives? Or did you think it was easier than confining yourself to one POV? One story?
RITA CHUN
It was easier because I was trying to crank out a longer piece, but I couldn’t. I found myself writing a lot of vignettes. Every time I would write one, I felt there was a connection to the last piece I wrote. I didn’t want to change the characters, so I added some references that could be connective tissues. Before the editing process with Sam and Maggie, it was murky. Now, it’s intentionally murky and connected better.
LIZ
How did writing TwoSpanTime help you grow as a person?
RITA CHUN
I realized I could write a novella. I tried writing two novellas in the past, but I couldn’t finish them. I never had that much to say about a singular story. The longer a story went on, the more I was bored with it. With this piece, it was fun finding a story to add in. As I grow older, I can write longer pieces; it’s about attention span and maturity.
LIZ
Was writing TwoSpanTime a cathartic experience?
RITA CHUN
Yes, for sure. I personally felt fractured and confused before writing it. The semester had just ended. I moved from Boston to Korea, and it was jarring. I felt accomplished by putting different puzzle pieces together and making a whole. Even though nothing was solved in the ending, the stories still feel whole. Everything is still open. The door is still open.
There’s a quote that goes like, “Stories have meaning, but life has significances. Meaning is only found in the ending.” Translating life’s significances into a story with no set meaning was cathartic. Nothing has to be resolved. There’s no closure at the end that gives meaning to the whole piece. But that’s the point.
LIZ
If you had the ability to, what would you say to readers before they read TwoSpanTime?
RITA CHUN
“I wrote this. Here you go.” I feel like everything you get out of the story comes from the person who reads it. I am reluctant to take another person’s reading of a story. I like fiction because anything goes.