Meet NUNUM's contributor: T.M. Stielow

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with ​T.M. Stielow

What was the first book you remember picking up and reading by yourself?
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Winnie the Pooh. But my mother had read it to me and with me many times before I picked it up on my own, so if that doesn’t count, then—and I’m not proud of this— The Hardy Boys.

What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer?

Ken Liu’s Paper Menagerie brought me to tears in twelve pages and convinced me that I don’t need to plan a novel to get, and perhaps even offer, catharsis when writing.

Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

“A Swim in a Pond in the Rain” by George Saunders. Read the book for all the nuts and bolts advice, of course, 

but if possible listen to him read the intro on the audiobook. He is so passionate about the writing process and the potential for writing to affect people in meaningful ways.

Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style?
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I am not pretending to measure up to this, but I want to say Lucia Berlin because I love her style so much and go 

back to her often when I experience doubt. The blurring between her real life lived experience, her pain, and her fiction is impossible for me to differentiate. I love that.

Why write flash fiction?

So that 3500 word story I wrote and loved needed editing and editing and more editing. And then I realized that most of the “clever” parts were superfluous and self indulgent. Setting out to write flash after that gave me a totally different perspective on what parts of a story are actually essential. 

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Read a ton of journals to see what they are about and find the ones that match something about your style. Then, when you are sitting there deciding which single journal to send your work to, send it to ten instead. Then send it to ten more. And then, yeah, ten more. 

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How much of yourself is in your characters?
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Probably too much. Or, maybe: hopefully too much. I’m not sure which answer fits better.

T.M. Stielow writes fiction and music at home in Delta, British Columbia. Their work often, perhaps accidentally, explores doubt, isolation, and introversion. 
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