Adam Graham
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
Adam Graham: Success as a writer means moving even just one person with my writing. As long as at least one person feels something after reading what I’ve written or thinks about the story long after they have read it then that to me is a huge success.
ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?
AG: Denis Johnson, Marilynne Robinson, Junot Diaz, Marlon James, Claire Keegan, John Banville, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Olen Butler, Scott McClanahan, Laird Barron, Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, and Lorrie Moore to name a few. I feel like these writers are able to perfectly display raw, imperfect, human emotion in ways that touch readers on a deeper level. I always strive to display that kind of humanity in my work and if I can mimic even a fraction of what these writers have accomplished then I will be happy with myself. These writers have inspired me in life-altering ways and I will continue reading and rereading their work for the rest of my life.
ORP: Does writing or creating energize or exhaust you? What aspects of your artistic process would you consider the most challenging or rewarding?
AG: It energizes me when I actually manage to write something but when I spend hours staring at a blinking cursor or trying to remember all the rules for commas it gets kind of exhausting. Sometimes I’ll get one good sentence and that’s kind of energizing. Other times I delete whole paragraphs and wonder why I even try. Actually sending out work is very energizing but rejection is unsurprisingly exhausting though I know it’s part of the process. It was energizing to no end to be accepted by ORP. When I read my acceptance email, I audibly said “no way” while sitting at my work desk and then ran out of my office to call my fiancée. I was so excited. She probably didn’t understand a word I said.
ORP: What would you say is your most interesting writing and/or artistic quirk? Do you have any habits that you believe help or hinder your creativity?
AG: If I outline a story it’s basically dead on arrival. Something about outlining makes me feel like my story is in a cage and there’s no room to let it breathe. For better or for worse I kind of just throw words at a page and see what sticks. Sometimes I end up with pages of word salad and sometimes a miracle happens and a story pops out.
I also have to be caffeinated to write anything worthwhile. If I don’t have any caffeine in me I might as well headbutt the keyboard as that would produce better results. I hope I can break that habit one day but it’s probably not going to happen. I’m drinking coffee as I write this.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
AG: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler, Tinkers by Paul Harding, The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney. I will probably continue to come back to these books for the rest of my life. Books like these make life worth living.
