I’ve sat across from writers in quiet cafes, in cluttered home offices, and once in a hotel lobby so aggressively beige it felt like an interrogation room. The tape recorder is always on, but the real conversation often starts when I ask a question that makes them pause. Not the ones about inspiration or their daily word count. The ones about the novel that died in a drawer. The character they couldn’t save. The ethical line they crossed to get the story right. These are the moments when a literary interview stops being a promotional stop on a book tour and becomes something closer to a reckoning. This is the space I want to live in as an interviewer: the space of failure, doubt, and the uncomfortable choices that shape a writer’s work.
For too long, the standard author Q&A has orbited around success. We ask about the spark of an idea, the research process, the triumphant moment of completion. But what if we’re missing the real story? The one that lives in the abandoned drafts, the ethical compromises, the characters who refused to cooperate? This article is an argument for centering failure in literary conversations—not as a footnote, but as the primary lens through which we understand craft and character.
The Failure-Shaped Hole in the Author Interview
Pick up any literary magazine and flip to the interview section. You’ll likely find a predictable rhythm: a question about the book’s origin, a nod to the writer’s routine, a polite inquiry about theme. What’s almost always absent is a sustained, uncomfortable look at what went wrong. We treat a published book as a finished, inevitable object, ignoring the graveyard of missteps that made it possible. This isn’t just a gap in the conversation; it’s a distortion of how art actually gets made.
Writers, in my experience, are often desperate to talk about their failures. Not the sanitized, “I had to revise a lot” version, but the real stuff: the novel that collapsed under its own research, the memoir that hurt someone they loved, the short story that revealed a truth about themselves they weren’t ready to face. When I ask about these things, the atmosphere in the room changes. The publicist’s smile might tighten, but the writer leans in. They know this is where the living tissue of their work resides.
The Performance of the Polished Author
We’ve all read interviews that feel like a press release transcribed. The author is gracious, articulate, and utterly guarded. They’ve been trained—by publicists, by experience, by the bruising world of online discourse—to present a finished self alongside a finished book. But this performance does a disservice to readers who are also writers, or who simply want to understand how a human being navigates the messy process of creation. It also flattens the book itself, reducing a complex, often contradictory object to a simple product with a simple origin story.
I remember talking to a memoirist whose book dealt with a family estrangement. The published version was elegant and restrained, but in our conversation, she admitted she’d cut a hundred pages of raw, accusatory material. Not because it was poorly written, but because she realized she was using the page to punish, not to understand. That admission—that her first instinct was revenge, and that revision was an ethical act—told me more about the craft of memoir than any discussion of structure ever could. It also, I suspect, told readers something vital about the person behind the polished prose.
Why We Avoid the Hard Questions
The reluctance to probe failure isn’t just on the interviewer’s side. Writers are often complicit. There’s a fear that admitting to a failed novel or a botched character will make them look amateurish. The publishing industry, with its relentless focus on the next book, the next deal, the next reading, doesn’t leave much room for public vulnerability. But this silence has a cost. It creates a culture where emerging writers believe that real authors don’t struggle, that their own false starts and dead ends are signs they don’t belong.
As an interviewer, I’ve had to learn to push past this mutual discomfort. It requires building trust quickly, often in a thirty-minute window before a publicist taps their watch. I don’t ambush writers. I signal early that I’m interested in the hard parts, and I share my own failures as a way of opening the door. When I tell a novelist about the years I spent on a manuscript that never sold, their shoulders often drop. They recognize a fellow traveler.
What Failure Reveals About Craft
Failure isn’t just a juicy anecdote. It’s a diagnostic tool. When a writer describes a scene they couldn’t make work, they’re revealing the hidden architecture of their craft. They’re showing us the load-bearing walls of narrative: the point where character motivation buckles, where plot logic frays, where language fails to hold the weight of emotion. These are the lessons that craft books gesture toward but can’t fully teach, because they’re specific to each writer’s obsessions and blind spots.
I once asked a novelist about a secondary character who seemed to vanish halfway through the book. The author’s answer was a masterclass in narrative triage. The character had been central to an earlier draft, a vehicle for exploring the protagonist’s guilt. But as the protagonist evolved, the character became redundant. Cutting her felt like an amputation, the writer said, but keeping her would have been a lie. That single answer illuminated more about revision, about the ruthless logic of storytelling, than any craft lecture I’ve ever attended.
The Ethical Failures We Don’t Discuss
Beyond craft, there’s a deeper, murkier territory: the ethical compromises of writing. Memoirists and autofiction writers navigate this constantly. Whose story is it to tell? What damage does the telling do? I’ve interviewed writers who’ve changed names and details to protect the innocent, and others who’ve refused to, arguing that the truth, however painful, is non-negotiable. Neither position is comfortable, and the best interviews sit in that discomfort rather than resolving it.
One writer told me about a character based on her sister, a portrayal so unflinching that it ended their relationship for years. She didn’t regret the book, but she regretted the cost. “I thought I was being brave,” she said. “I was just being cruel with a thesaurus.” That line has stayed with me. It’s a reminder that the page is not a moral vacuum, and that the choices we make as writers have real-world consequences. These are the conversations that literary interviews should be having, not as scandal, but as serious ethical inquiry.
Building an Interview Practice Around the Uncomfortable
So how do we, as interviewers, create the conditions for this kind of honesty? It starts with preparation that goes beyond reading the book. I read between the lines. I look for the silences, the evasions, the places where the prose seems to be protecting itself. I come to the conversation with questions that are specific and personal, but never cruel. The goal isn’t to catch a writer in a contradiction; it’s to understand why the contradiction exists.
I also avoid the temptation to rescue the writer from their own discomfort. When a writer pauses, when they stumble, when they say, “I don’t know if I should admit this,” I wait. I don’t fill the silence with reassurance. That silence is where the real answer lives. It’s a small, almost clinical act of holding space, but it’s the most important tool I have.
Questions That Open the Door
Over years of doing this work, I’ve developed a set of questions that reliably move a conversation beyond the surface. They’re not tricks or gotchas. They’re invitations to go deeper, offered with genuine curiosity and a willingness to hear whatever comes back.
- “What’s the worst writing advice you ever took seriously?” This question almost always unlocks a story about a failed project, a misguided mentor, or a creative dead end. It also reveals what the writer values now, by contrast.
- “Tell me about a character you couldn’t save.” This gets at the heart of narrative failure. Writers often have deep, unresolved feelings about characters who didn’t make it, and their answers reveal their understanding of agency, tragedy, and the limits of their own imagination.
- “What did you cut from this book that you wish you could have kept?” This question honors the grief of revision. It acknowledges that cutting isn’t just an editorial act; it’s a loss. The answer often illuminates the book’s central tensions.
- “Was there a moment when you felt you’d crossed an ethical line?” This is the hardest question, and I don’t ask it lightly. But for writers working with real lives—their own or others’—it’s the question that matters most.
The Pacific Northwest Sensibility: Weathering the Emotional Climate
There’s a reason this approach feels native to a Pacific Northwest literary sensibility. We live in a region shaped by gray skies, long winters, and a certain comfort with melancholy. Our literary tradition—from Ken Kesey’s fractured heroes to Ursula K. Le Guin’s quiet radicalism to the raw memoirs of Lidia Yuknavitch—has always been more interested in the crack than the facade. We understand that growth happens in the damp, dark places, not under the harsh glare of a spotlight.
This isn’t about wallowing. It’s about a specific kind of attention: the willingness to sit with discomfort, to ask the next question even when the answer hurts, to believe that what’s broken can be more interesting than what’s whole. When I interview a writer from the Pacific Northwest, there’s often an unspoken understanding that we’re not here to perform. We’re here to dig.
Case Study: The Novel That Almost Wasn’t
Several years ago, I spoke with a debut novelist whose book had been shortlisted for a major prize. The novel was a taut, elegant thing about a family unraveling after a child’s accident. In our conversation, she revealed that the published version was actually her third attempt at the story. The first draft was written from the mother’s perspective and was, in her words, “a sentimental disaster.” The second was from the father’s, and it was “cold and clinical, like a case study.” She abandoned the project for two years, convinced she couldn’t write it.
What brought her back was a failure in her own life: a professional setback that left her feeling unmoored. She realized she’d been avoiding the child’s perspective because it was too painful. The final, published novel is told from the point of view of the child’s older sister, a character who exists at a slight remove from the central tragedy but is deeply affected by it. That distance, the writer said, was the key. It allowed her to approach the material with the right balance of empathy and clarity. Without the two failed drafts, she would never have found the right voice.
Why This Matters for Readers and Writers
When we center failure in literary conversations, we do more than satisfy curiosity. We demystify the creative process. We show emerging writers that the path to a finished book is paved with missteps, and that those missteps are not signs of inadequacy but evidence of serious engagement with the work. We also give readers a richer understanding of the book in their hands, revealing it not as a perfect artifact but as a hard-won compromise between ambition and ability.
This approach also builds a different kind of relationship between interviewer and subject. It’s not adversarial, but it’s not comfortable either. It’s a relationship built on mutual respect for the difficulty of the work. When a writer trusts me enough to share their failures, I feel a profound responsibility to honor that trust—not by softening the edges, but by presenting their words with the complexity they deserve.
The Interviewer’s Own Failures
I’ve failed in interviews, too. I’ve asked questions that were too vague, too leading, or too self-serving. I’ve missed the moment when a writer was ready to open up because I was too focused on my next question. I’ve walked away from conversations knowing I let the writer stay safe, that I colluded in the performance because it was easier. These failures have taught me more than my successes. They’ve made me a better listener, a more patient questioner, and a more honest interlocutor.
One of my most instructive failures came early in my career, when I interviewed a poet whose work I deeply admired. I was so nervous about seeming intelligent that I asked a series of overly academic questions. The poet, politely but firmly, called me out. “You’re not actually curious about that,” she said. “What do you really want to know?” I admitted I wanted to know about the grief that saturated her collection—a grief I recognized but couldn’t name. The interview that followed was raw and unpolished, and it was the first one I was truly proud of.
Practical Steps for Interviewers
If you’re an interviewer who wants to move beyond the promotional Q&A, here are some concrete practices I’ve developed:
- Read the silences. Before the interview, read the book with a notebook, marking not just what’s there but what’s missing. What isn’t said? What emotion is being held at arm’s length? These gaps are your entry points.
- Share your own vulnerability first. I often begin by acknowledging my own struggles as a writer or interviewer. This isn’t a tactic; it’s a genuine attempt to level the playing field.
- Ask about process, not just product. Instead of “How did you come up with this idea?” try “What was the hardest part of this book to write, and why?”
- Follow the discomfort. If a writer hesitates or says something that seems to cost them, stay there. Don’t move on to the next question. Ask, “Can you say more about that?”
- Respect the boundary. Not every writer will want to go deep, and that’s okay. The goal is to create an opening, not to force a confession.
What This Means for elizagalesinterviews.com
This site is built on the belief that literary interviews can be more than marketing. They can be a form of criticism, a space for ethical inquiry, and a record of how art is actually made. Every interview I publish will, in some way, engage with failure—not as a theme, but as a method. I’ll ask writers about the books that didn’t work, the characters they abandoned, the lines they crossed and regretted. I’ll ask them what they’re still trying to figure out.
This isn’t about negativity. It’s about honesty. And I believe that honesty, in the long run, is more generous than praise. It tells writers and readers alike: you are not alone in your struggles. The work is hard for everyone. And the failures are not obstacles to success; they are the very substance of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why focus on failure in literary interviews?
Focusing on failure reveals the hidden craft decisions, ethical struggles, and emotional labor that shape a book. It moves the conversation beyond promotion and into a deeper understanding of how literature is actually made, offering more value to readers and writers alike.
How do you get writers to open up about their failures?
It starts with building trust. I signal early that I’m interested in the difficult parts of the process, share my own vulnerabilities, and ask specific, non-judgmental questions. I also respect a writer’s boundaries and never push for a confession they’re not ready to give.
Isn’t this approach too negative for a literary interview?
Not if it’s done with genuine curiosity and respect. The goal isn’t to dwell on failure for its own sake, but to understand how it shapes the work. Many writers find these conversations more meaningful and honest than standard promotional interviews.
What’s the difference between a craft failure and an ethical failure in writing?
A craft failure is a technical or artistic misstep—a character that doesn’t work, a plot that collapses. An ethical failure involves the real-world consequences of writing, such as harming someone by how they’re portrayed or exploiting a vulnerable subject. Both are worth exploring, but ethical failures require particular care and sensitivity.
This article is part of an ongoing series on the craft and ethics of literary interviewing. Future pieces will explore the role of silence in conversation, the ethics of memoir, and how to interview writers about trauma without retraumatizing them.
