Our March Web Exclusive, “You Haven’t Won Anything Yet,” is a taut, complex, and slightly odd story about a missing child and an adult with a missing childhood. It’s a terrific example of using negative space, and nearly every sentence is a surprise. We (finally) spoke with author Hal Walling about his approach, and, yes, indulged ourselves with a couple of Canada questions.
Erin McReynolds: In “You Haven’t Won Anything Yet,” the police are trying to see if the narrator is this still-missing child from years ago. How did this story come to you/What came first?
Hal Walling: In the 1990s, there was a very high-profile case of a missing child here on Vancouver Island. It occurred before I moved here, but I remember seeing the boy’s face on posters and hearing kids at school talk about him as if he were a celebrity. Years later, I came across a thread on a hockey message board where a poster said the police called him to say they suspected he was the famous missing boy, and they wanted him to take a DNA test. The idea of that guy’s internal conflict, combined with my own childhood memories resurfacing—I knew I had to write about it.
EM: This story jumped out at us in large part because there was so much of the unexpected in it; in his voice, in the dialogue, in the information given. Do you have any advice for bringing the unexpected into your stories?
HW: Plan as little as possible. I don’t know if that’s good advice in general, for fiction writers or anyone else, but I find planning always takes some of the adventure out of writing.
For example, the first time I tried to write this story, I did a lot of planning and thinking ahead and wrote 10,000 words of plodding, lifeless prose before shoving it in a drawer. When I started over a few years later, I made an effort to be more impulsive and let the details reveal themselves. The result was much different from the original draft—shorter, obviously, but also the voice and tone and even the characters are quite different. My tendency is to write longer, more prosaic stories, so it was fun to make this one punchier, darker, more surprising.
EM: I was just talking about this with another editor, how the stories you really need to write stay with you even if you’ve wiped away every word of it away. But it can be overwhelming to have all these elements–characters, situations, settings, some lines–loosely floating around in there and multiplying. Do you have a way of keeping story elements at hand for when you’re ready? Or are you more organic?
HW: Oh, that’s a good question. I have notebooks all over the house and hundreds of notes saved to my phone, but I rarely look at them. I’ve always assumed most fiction writers are the same way. That said, I do think writing things down is helpful. I can remember certain details I’ve saved, or annotations I’ve made in books, without having to physically recover them.
EM: Another thing we love about this story is its use of negative space—there’s a lot of information we aren’t given on purpose. Like why he was singled out as a possible candidate. Why he and his mother are so foreign to each other. The meaning of his stressful dream. Do you start by including the information and edit it out in later drafts, or do you let some things be a mystery even to you?
HW: I love the idea of writing a story and then carefully editing it down to create mystery, but truthfully I don’t know if I’ve ever done that. The negative space you refer to was more likely the result of familiarity—the fact that I had real-life details in mind, and also that I had already tried writing an earlier version. That level of familiarity makes it easy to take certain facts for granted.
As for whether some details remain a mystery—yes, definitely. As long as the story feels plausible and imaginable, I don’t need to know all the answers.
EM: Are Canadian cops really this nice?
HW: In the small town where I grew up, we were harassed by cops on an almost weekly basis. A friend and I were talking about this the other day—how those cops had nothing better to do than bust up our parties and chase a bunch of teenagers around town. Were they nice about it? I can’t remember. Perhaps they were. But they seemed so sad and pathetic.
EM: Boy, that’s fertile territory for character—sad, pathetic people in positions of power. Speaking of, can I ask the inevitable question (if you’re comfortable answering): how is America looking from up there? I understand this is a broad question.
HW: It’s extremely upsetting. I did my MFA in New York and was gutted to have to leave in 2013, but now I can’t imagine going back. I don’t feel a shred of relief being Canadian, either. What’s happening down there is horrible, demoralizing on a global scale. I am filled with actual hatred. I lose sleep over it. I’m sure you know what that’s like.
EM: It feels like, I imagine, being caught in a sudden rock slide. You know there’s a path, possibly more than one, that we might all be able to move through and come out of this safely—more united, more conscientious, better than before. I think storytelling is an important part of that. Do you feel like your writing and reading interests have changed?
HW: I don’t know. I’ve certainly felt discouraged and found myself questioning the value of writing fiction. I was in Washington, DC, for AWP last year, and it was surreal to be there at that time, just a few weeks after the inauguration. I remember everyone asking, “What are we doing? Is this important?” and the consensus being, yes, perhaps it has never been more important. That said, I don’t write politically motivated fiction, and I’m not particularly interested in reading it. If my writing and reading habits have changed, it’s to check myself every now and then and ask, “Is this impactful? Does this have meaning?”
EM: Speaking of, how is your novel coming along and what’s it about?
HW: I’m superstitious, so I can’t tell you what it’s about, except to say that it’s the story of a life. It’s coming along . . . slowly. I used to feel a stronger sense of urgency about getting it done before I turned thirty, but I’m thirty-one now and I feel much better. I’ve started over a few times trying to find a structure that works. I think I’ve got it.
EM: On the one hand, we might create all this “by this age I’ll have done X” pressure because the world places such a premium on youthful success (it gives them more time to tear you down?), but on the other hand, artists thrive when given limits. Do you find yourself creating restrictions that stimulate you as you work?
HW: My day job is restriction enough. I have a limited window every morning to write before I go to work. I write all my first drafts by hand, which I suppose is another type of restriction. It helps propel me forward, remove distractions (i.e. the impulse to revise). And I write on legal pads or in cheap composition books so I’m less concerned about making it look “nice.”
Hal Walling lives in Victoria, BC, Canada. His short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, The Southwest Review, The Malahat Review, The Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, and Prairie Fire. He is working on a novel.