Felicia Berliner
/How did you become a writer?
My mom taught me to read when I was in pre-school, and that early start on reading stories also made me want to write them. I had a pretty typical (white girl-gendered) reading list growing up: from Nancy Drew and Louisa May Alcott to Agatha Christie, with a heavy swerve into Pearl S. Buck. I also read Sholom Aleichem and I.B. Singer and I.L. Peretz, which persuaded me that Jewish literature was literature (even if, at that time, it seemed to be lacking a woman’s perspective). My high school English teacher told me to read The Sound and the Fury, and that changed my life. While I didn’t understand what Faulkner was doing—totally missed the plot—I experienced deep, nearly overwhelming feelings, like a cup of emotion not quite spilling over but about to. I wanted to do that, too: tell a story to make people feel.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).
The Torah is my primary writing influence, and there’s a listening for Torah in all the rest of my reading, which gives context to my love of Faulkner and Toni Morrison. But the novels I adore as a reader are not the best diet for me as a writer. I need the precise, gorgeous prose of Maggie Nelson in my head when I work, along with her permission to write a woman’s desire. I cycle through Nelson’s books The Argonauts and Bluets every year. Marlon James is another writing influence. A Brief History of Seven Killings hit me like a contemporary Ulysses, but better, more symphonic, a weave of rhythms and language that really made me listen. I’m also interested in a kind of Jewish magical realism—a literary love-child of Gabriel García Márquez and Bernard Malamud. And I did find Jewish women’s voices, Grace Paley and Clarice Lispector.
I’ll add one more influence on craft: the brilliant writer and literary citizen, Alexander Chee. I’d started writing my novel in present tense but had misgivings about that rather unconventional choice. Then I read Chee’s beautiful first novel, Edinburgh, which flexes the most plastic and mobile present tense, and I forged ahead.
When and where do you write?
The idea of writing in the morning is so appealing! But the truth is that I write a lot more at night, after my job and/or parenting are done for the day. I write on weekends and whenever I can grab the time. “Vacations” = writing time. I write mostly in my home office/bedroom.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a new novel that I started during National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo had struck me as crazy and stupid. How could anyone write a novel in a month? And November, of all months; Thanksgiving owns November. At least pick a month with 31 days or no national holidays! I finally realized that anything I objected to that strenuously deserved a try…
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
My form of writer’s block is not knowing how to finish things. If you’ve written a lot but nothing’s ever “ready” to submit for publication—that’s a block. People in my writing group had to tell me, “Don’t bring this here again!” so that I would stop revising and writing new sections and revising again, and start trying to find an agent for my debut novel, Shmutz. I’d still like to write more Shmutz.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
bell hooks said we don’t heal in isolation, that “healing is an act of communion.” Though I write alone, my creative process pulls in community—the generous souls in my writing group, the people I text before or after I write, the artwork and music I keep close for inspiration.
I’ll also go back to Marlon James, a living reminder that rejection—even repeated, seemingly unending rejection—is not a reliable indicator of the value of our work, and definitely not a reason to stop writing.
What’s your advice to new writers?
I can pass along some advice from a New Yorker profile about a tech innovator, Moxie Marlinspike (gets award for best name), who says “the only secret is to begin.” He’s surely not the first person to say that, and various spiritual practices have also pointed me in that direction. But I’ll credit him for now. I have a lot of compassion for the ways that fear can be paralyzing. Also, working for pay (i.e., work other than making art) and caregiving can at times be depleting. But the illusion that life will eventually mellow out and the muse will descend and you’ll write in the sunrise of ideal circumstances…nope. If there’s no human bleeding or puking in front of you, can you steal fifteen minutes to write something? Go in the bathroom with a notebook, if that’s the only option, and lock the door.
Felicia Berliner is a writer in New York City. She has an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded a Teaching Fellowship. Shmutz is her debut novel, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in July 2022. Her nonfiction has appeared in LitHub and other publications. She also coaches writers, artists, entrepreneurs, educators, and other change-makers, with certification from the NeuroLeadership Institute as a Results Based Coach. There’s more at www.feliciaberliner.com.
