Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, was published in Fall 2008 by the University of Georgia Press, and will be republished in paperback Vintage/Knopf in 2010. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Andrew is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship from the James Michener/Copernicus Foundation, an Iowa Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the University of Iowa, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee’ Writers’ Conference, a Residency Fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and many more. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Epoch, The Ontario Review, Prairie Schooner, The Antioch Review, StoryQuarterly, The Threepenny Review, Others Voices, Story and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, among others. He has also had his work broadcast NPR’s Selected Shorts and selected as one of the 100 Distinguished Stories of 2007 by Best American Short Stories. Currently, he lives in San Antonio, where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Trinity University. Visit his website for more information.

There are several lines in your story “The Theory of Light and Matter” that jumped out at me as being discussion worthy. The first one I’d like to talk about is: “As soon as you think you understand something, you eliminate any opportunity for discovery.” I love the notion that “expertise” is, in a sense, stifling. How does this theory apply to writing, and in particular, characters and motivation?

This is actually something I talk to my students about on the first day of class, this idea of thinking about writing as an act of discovery, a concept that Flannery O’Connor writes about a lot in Mystery and Manners. In other words, in terms of writing, I think it’s dangerous to try to figure out everything ahead of time, to decide what is going to happen in the story, or what you want the story to be about, before you’ve even written it. On the one hand, this takes all the fun out of writing it, but perhaps more importantly, it also limits the potential complexity of the story as well as the possibility for genuine surprise. I mean, if you’re not discovering anything in the process of writing the story, how can you expect that the reader will? So yes, even though Robert is talking about physics when he says this, I think it can definitely be applied to writing or any other form of art for that matter.

In the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Poets and Writers, you revealed to Nicole Pezold in a profile about your prizewinning stories, that you write “pages upon pages of raw content about the characters before going back and devising plot and structure.” Is this where you “learn,” or “discover,” what the story is about? Is it always a character, or characters, that first infects you? Never plot?

For me, the plot of a story always grows out of the character, or characters, so yes, I usually start by trying to figure out who these characters are and what they want, what’s troubling them, and so on. After I’ve written enough pages, I begin to see certain potential conflicts or certain situations that might make for an interesting story, and then I begin writing scenes and back story that relate to these situations or conflicts. As I said to Nicole, it’s not the fastest way to write a story, but that’s my method. As for whether or not I ever begin a story by thinking about plot, I’d have to say no, but that’s only because when I find myself thinking too much about plot, or what I want to happen in a particular story, I begin to feel boxed in. I no longer feel like I can allow the characters to act freely.

Well, your method works! Your stories are captivating and thoughtful, not to mention successful. They also tend to fall on the longer side. Do you think your writing process makes them naturally this way?

Yes, I think, it probably does. After all, some of my first drafts are as long as sixty or seventy pages, which makes condensing them to, say, ten or fifteen almost impossible. In recent years, I think I’ve become more and more drawn to longer stories, stories that aren’t quite novellas, but are still longer than the typical story you might encounter in a literary magazine. In fact, I think one of the reasons I liked Lorrie Moore’s edition of the Best American Short Stories so much was because she chose so many longer stories, stories that fall into that strange middle ground between short story and novella.

Back to that second line I’d like to discuss… It also stems out of something your character Robert said. He said that art is something one has to *work* for. Do you believe this is true? Has it been true for you?

Well, it’s certainly been true for me in terms of my own work, as I’m sure it is for most writers, but in the context of that scene Robert is also talking about how art is something that the person on the other end—the reader, viewer, listener—has to work to understand or appreciate. Personally, I don’t try to write difficult stories. That is to say, I don’t purposely try to make my stories difficult to understand. On the contrary, I work hard to make the reading experience as easy, and hopefully pleasurable, as possible. But at the same time, many of my favorite books are books that were difficult, or challenging, for me to read. Ulysees, for example, is a wonderful book, but when I read it in college, I found it hard to read more than a few pages at a time without having to take a break. In the end, finishing that book was one of the most rewarding reading experience of my life, but it was by no means an easy read, especially at that age.

You and your book have received a fair amount of press, including a shout in San Antonio Express-News’ “Five Best Books of 2008″ list, an interview with NPR, several appearances in Poets and Writers, and even a reading where actors read from The Theory of Light and Matter. How hard did you have to work to get yourself and your work out there?

I definitely did some work last summer to prepare for the release of my book in October. I created a website, for example, and set up some readings. I also relied a lot on the advice of my dear friend Holiday Reinhorn, who went through this process with her collection Big Cats a few years before. Holiday told me that the most important periods of time were the six weeks before the book came out and the six weeks after, so I tried to set up as many things as possible that fell within that time frame. Once I began to set up some readings, and once people began to hear about the book, a lot of other things fell into place. I was amazed by how many people from my past just contacted out me of the blue and offered to help out, whether it was setting up a reading, selecting my book for their book club, or whatever.

How important are connections in this business?

I think connections can be helpful, but only up to a point. I mean, if you’re not producing publishable work, then it’s not going to matter who you know or how many connections you have. At the same time, if you don’t have any connections at all, it might take you a little longer to get your foot in the door. For example, some of my friends have found agents because they were recommended to a particular agent by another friend. It’s more than likely that these people would have still found agents through other avenues, but the connection just made the process a little easier. So yes, connections can sometimes speed things up, but only if the work is good in the first place. And I honestly believe that good work will always gets noticed sooner or later, whether a writer has connections or not.

Training vs. natural talent. Which, in your experience, produces stronger stories?

To be honest, I don’t put a lot of stock in natural talent. I think almost all writers have some talent, but talent without discipline and hard work isn’t going to get you very far. I mean, I went to graduate school with a lot of very talented writers, but these writers were also among the most driven and hardest working people I’d ever met. They were all extremely well read and devoted to studying and learning the craft of writing. And the same can be said of the students I’ve taught over the years. I’ve encountered some incredibly talented writers in my classes, but the ones who have gone on to have success are the ones who worked the hardest at it, the ones who seemed to understand that it wasn’t going to come easily, that they were going to have to put in the hours if they really wanted to make a career of it.

Let’s get back to The Theory of Light and Matter. What does the brick at the end of “River Dog” symbolize?

That’s an interesting question, and I’m not sure that I have an answer. To me, that final scene of “River Dog” has always symbolized the narrator’s relationship with his brother, the way he has constantly had to clean up after him (both literally and figuratively) and also the way he has always been the one who ultimately internalizes the guilt and responsibility for his brother’s actions. As for the brick, it’s simply one more thing he has to clean up as well as concrete evidence of his brother’s criminal behavior. Even the owner of the car, their neighbor, doesn’t feel that he should have to remove it. It’s only the narrator, in the end, who assumes this responsibility, and thus, in a sense, this gesture defines him.

Your story “Skin” is a short-short, and the only short piece in the collection. Since most of your stories run long, a point we discussed above, I’m curious how this story came about.

Unlike most of my longer stories, “Skin” came pretty easily. In fact, if memory serves me, I wrote it in a single sitting. I have a habit of sitting down and writing little sketches or scenes, some of which turn into longer stories and some of which don’t. In the case of “Skin,” by the time I’d finished writing, I realized that what had at first seemed like a sketch was in fact a complete story, or at least it felt complete to me.

What’s next for Andrew Porter?

Well, my collection will be coming out in paperback with Knopf/Vintage next winter or spring, so I’ll be working with them in the coming months to prepare for the release. Knopf will also be publishing my novel in progress at some point in the future, so a good part of this next summer will be spent working on that. As for other things, I’ll probably keep working on new stories for my next collection as well as possibly some essay projects. I always have a number of things in the works; it’s just a matter of finding time to work on all of them.