"A Space for Experimentation, Chances, Accidents and Discoveries." Alexander B. Hogan on Online Mag The Flexible Persona

How did you become involved with The Flexible Persona? Can you expand on this blurb, taken from the website: “A creative space where readers, writers, composers and listeners interact”?

Cheska Avery Lynn and I started The Flexible Persona after a lot of conversations about writing and literature and creativity. The title of the journal is actually a term from Jungian psychology relating to a person’s strategy for fitting into the world while remaining themselves. And a lot of our interest is in finding character-driven stories about people surviving a very dehumanizing world—finding a niche, even. As we started evolving, it occurred to us that the journal, itself, could be such a place or niche.

Maybe it is even an experiment in re-humanization. We wanted a space that isn’t commercial or status driven — two of the primary ways everyone is being dehumanized these days. It is a space for creative expression and taking joy in that expression. A space where new and experienced writers can interact. It should also be a space for experimentation, chances, accidents and discoveries.

How do you feel The Flexible Persona differs from other online literary journals?

We are very multimodal right now. You can read the work through iBooks. Our ePubs actually include audio versions of the story. In those audio broadcasts, we let listeners not only hear the authors reading their own work, but also encounter this interplay with experimental and minimalist composers and sound artists. I think the end result is powerful. We offer an invitation through sound to turn inward and experience other worlds.

What percentage of previously unpublished writers do you debut per issue?

I think maybe half of the stories published this year have been first-time publications. I couldn’t tell you which ones off the top of my head.

What is the key element in your ideal submission?

I look for a story that captures something true about the experience of living. I really like Herzog’s concept of the ecstatic truth. I believe there is something like that in writing.

The worst thing a submitter can do?

Eat packaged foods. It turns out they’re really not healthy. Apart from that, I would say the worst thing that can happen is for a submitter to take a rejection personally.

What inspired your first published short story, “The Dulcimer?” How long had you been submitting to literary magazines before your piece was selected this March? (And congratulations!)

Thank you. That’s very kind of you. I’m interested in the relationship between boys and their grandmothers as a vehicle for telling stories. And I was at a stage in my life where I was thinking about how we set expectations for a relationship and how we strive to be someone’s favorite person. I had sent the piece out for a month or two. This was a piece that received some fairly unfavorable remarks in a workshop. I think that speaks to the importance of not taking every critique to heart.

Describe your own writing process.

I write and then I let it sit, and then I come back and rewrite it. It’s hard work, and is there anything less interesting than hard work? But it’s a lot of fun on the inside.

Biggest piece of advice for beginning and emerging writers?

Be kind to your writing and to yourself. Learn to tell the difference between productive criticism and the other stuff. And above all, ignore the other stuff, even, no, especially when it comes from inside you. It’s only when you can finally play nice with yourself that you’re fit to play at all.

In your bio, you imply that you spend a lot of time in restaurants. Food or inspiration?

There is something enchanting about a dimly lit restaurant. It should be small. If possible, filled to half or three-fourths capacity. You see the strangers clacking glasses and displaying their love or disdain for one another in front of you—their stranger. Then there’s the ritual of the meal. Napkins. Special flatware. Coursing. Pleasantries between you and the staff. Obviously the company you’ve chosen is central. Do they know how to be a dinner companion? Do you? Do you have special stories for the event, amusing anecdotes, fussy and eccentric habits to display? My grandmother, whose table manners were on the whole superior to mine, would use her butter knife as a mirror for reapplying her lipstick. I’ve had dining partners who never managed to order from the actual menu, who couldn’t be seen publicly drinking bottled water, who brought their own condiments. They were each among the best people I have known in life. People undervalue fussiness and eccentricity. I feel my most social in a calm, dimly lit restaurant, my most willing to have troubling conversations.

Any superstitions?

I would like to say I believe in vampires. But maybe it’s more that I would like to believe in vampires or that I can see a lot of good use for vampires. Vampires are really a pretty, potentially good idea. But then they’d probably end up getting marketed to death and become kind of a hollow metaphor. That would be a huge loss for the world … Oh, wait.

I have to ask because it’s such a hot topic right now: any thoughts on the MFA debate?

I think we have to each take the path that suits us best. The debate over MFA is totally misguided. As a professor, I can tell you that growth and development happen from the magic of encounters between two or more human beings. It’s uncertain. It’s unpredictable. People who need to predict, who need to be able to pass definitive judgments (is an MFA good or bad as if that can be determined for all people, everywhere) are missing so many chances. Maybe an MFA helps one person uncover their authentic voice. Excellent. Maybe it stifles another person and weighs them down with expectations and conformity. Now they have an opportunity to find themselves by overcoming that. Maybe someone does it for pure, unadulterated joy. Isn’t that good, too?

But does any of that mean someone who didn’t get an MFA can’t be a good writer? No. The debate is misguided.  It makes us think about predicting the world instead of actually living in it.

What non-literary influences tend to shape your work most?

My relationship with music is very important to my creative process. When we’re children, we all experience to varying degrees a lack of control over our world. Music is always a refuge, a space to live in until society recognizes your autonomy and allows you the chance to weed your own garden. Whenever I went into those musical spaces, eyes closed, completely inside, I started thinking about narratives, dreaming characters and plots and resolutions unattainable in my own life. I still do that. It’s purity of emotion that music can achieve, beyond or before language. Maybe music resonates with the unconscious or maybe it helps the unconscious escape.

I listen to Paavoharju, Lau Nau, David D. McIntire’s work. I like Mika Vainio. I’m really impacted by Genesis P. Orridge, though I can’t concretely trace how or why. Jozef  Van Wissem, Merzbow. The journal itself has brought me into contact with a lot of music that I find moving and has fed my own creative process. We have some really spectacular music coming up, too. I feel very honored to publish our writers and composers. Their talent is humbling. 

Laura Jean Schneider has a BA in English from Smith College and is an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Schneider was the 2014 recipient of the Big Snowy Prize in Fiction for her short story "A Long Way From Your Heart." Her short fiction story, "The Young Wife," was second runner up in the Tell It Strange Contest, hosted by The Writer and Gotham Writers, in August 2014. Her first non-fiction essay is forthcoming in New Mexico Magazine. More at www.laurajeanschneider.com.