Lynn Schmeidler: On the Playfulness of Short Stories

Lynn Schmeidler’s fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Georgia Review, KR Online, the Southern Review, and other publications, and she won the 2023 BOMB Fiction Contest for her short story “InventEd.” She has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is the author of the poetry book History of Gone and two poetry chapbooks, Wrack Lines and Curiouser & Curiouser. She lives in the Hudson Valley. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Lynn Schmeidler

In this interview, Lynn discusses the process of putting together her new short story collection, Half-Lives, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Lynn Schmeidler
Book title: Half-Lives
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Release date: March 26, 2024
Genre/category: Short stories
Previous titles: History of Gone; Wrack Lines; Curiouser & Curiouser
Elevator pitch: Amid heightened restrictions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, Lynn Schmeidler’s debut short story collection, Half-Lives, is a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women’s bodies and psyches. Playful and experimental, these stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where structures of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I wasn’t really conscious of writing a book at first. I was writing stories, and each story was its own weird and wonderful world where I could make the rules and then break them and then remake them. I love the playfulness and spontaneity of short stories. My favorites dive deeply into a moment then come up hungry for air. There were a number of things I was interested in exploring—a joke I took too seriously, a fairy tale I wanted to retell, a medical anomaly I could relate to, a celebrity impersonator I was fascinated by … and I began doing so one story at a time.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The book’s title story was the earliest story. It was originally published in the The Georgia Review in 2013. The newest story in the book was chosen by Jonathan Lethem as the winner of the 2023 BOMB fiction contest and was published by BOMB this past fall. I realized I had a collection of stories when I started gathering them together and saw they all had female protagonists, and all dealt in one way or another with living in a female body. What changed over time was the exact makeup of the stories and their order—I would write a new story and swap out an old one, and that would change the order in which I thought they should be read. Over time the book’s title changed as well, though Half-Lives was an early title and the one I kept coming back to, as I couldn’t resist its double meaning, suggesting lives both divided and also endlessly reverberating.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I don’t know if it was a surprise or just a delight that my publisher and editor was so open to my input, but that was something I have come to learn is not a given. Every step of the process I was consulted, included, and taken seriously—whether regarding the cover design or the placement of a comma. It was a pleasure working with Autumn House Press, and I wish all authors had such positive publishing experiences.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The biggest surprises came when I got to the point of playing with the order of the stories. That’s when I began to hear the cross talk between the different stories—the ways in which they spoke to one another—riffed and responded, embellished and harmonized, complicated and extended one another.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I write (and read) for moments of recognition and moments of surprise, so I hope readers find both in Half-Lives. Ideally, readers will put down the book and find themselves both more curious about and more connected to themselves and others. And of course, laughter. We all need a good laugh these days!

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write what fascinates you. Write for yourself. Because it’s you who are going to have to spend all the time with your characters and your sentences, and if you’re looking outward—at the market or the assumed audience, you’re jumping ahead of yourself. This is your chance to make something only you can make, so be true to your own strange aesthetic.

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