KMWR: I always love to know about the seed of a story. Can you speak to what it was like writing the first draft of “Men with Guns, Girls with Guitars”?

BB: The story started with the title ‘Men with Guns, Girls with Guitars’ that I just liked and thought for sure there was a good story in it. I’m not entirely sure where the exact title came from, I thought it up a long time ago. I think I got it from the John Sayles movie ‘Men with Guns’ and then I added ‘Girls with Guitars’ because I wanted to contrast the problem of violent men with not nearly as violent women, and I like a lot of guitar-centric women musicians from PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney to Courtney Barnett to Waxahatchee. After the title stayed in my mind for years, I eventually found the story about two musically inclined young women and the odyssey they have trying to make some music amongst aggressive, problematic men.
 
KMWR: I’d love to hear more about your writing process, especially when looking at your larger body of work—I’m thinking of “Peregrinations,” published by Otis Nebula, as well as “Missing,” published by X-R-A-Y—these stories all experiment with and execute interesting forms of the short story. The manipulation of line work and sentences, as well as formatting fonts, all aid in creating character and tension (and for “Men with Guns, Girls with Guitars” it’s humor) through your work. I have to know what comes first for you, the form of the story or the content?

BB: My writing process is usually slow, where I start with some thin content—maybe just a setting or feeling or a start I want to begin with or an end I want to get to—then I build upon that piece by piece trying to find the real story in that little idea. And as I try to find a full story, I often stumble upon a form that helps me get there by leading me out of a story that just isn’t going anywhere. That was especially true with a story like ‘Missing’, where I had an idea of how uncertain memories can come up through telling two separate and dubious recollections that share the memories that are true, or as in ‘Peregrinations’ where the commentary on the man’s unrelated encounters unites them in some way to show his inner state.
 
KMWR: Correct me if I’m wrong—I read that you had two plays produced at your local theater. What aspects of playwriting do you bring to your fiction writing, and what do you leave behind?

BB: I don’t really think of myself as a playwright. The two I wrote were very short ones. I don’t think there was a huge difference between the plays and stories I write. A play does not have nearly as much detail on the page, that’s left up to the director and actors, but my stories often are sparse in the details I provide.
 
KMWR: Where do you like to write, and what do you like to have close by as you write?

BB: I write in a few places. But a coffee shop is a go to. It gets me out of the home and forces me to be productive. And thus I like have to a cup of coffee next to me. I do write at home (and should do it at home more often) but I get distracted at home easily.
 
KMWR: Are there any new projects you’re working on?

BB: I always have a few projects in progress. But for the last year I’ve focused mostly on one that is a collection of interrelated stories about a cataclysmic illness and the revolutions that ensue. The stories are only related in the subject matter and are written as primary documents that are being collected for an archive in the aftermath of the worldwide disruption.
 
KMWR: Finally, what have you been reading recently?

BB: I just finished Mark Leyner’s The Tetherballs of Bougainville, which is insane in a good way. I also re-read of a lot of books and re-read Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day. And I like Central and Eastern European writers, so I recently read Lazlo Krasznahorkai’s Herscht 07769 and Olga Tokarczuk’s The Emposuim is on my to read list.

♤

Brian Brunson grew up in Oregon and now lives in Arizona where he works for the county and lives with his cat also named Brian. His stories have been published by Otis Nebula, Belletrist, and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine among others.