Dusty to Polished: Cleo Levin
What sparks your urge to write, is it always the same?
I feel like a lot of what I write starts with just noticing something small. Like a jotted note in my phone or in a notebook or something. Over time, it will reveal if it is just a simple thing I noticed or something that has larger resonances and is connected to other ideas. For instance, I started something recently that began with the idea that in the summer, in the heat, our efforts to keep ourselves cool and the energy we consume in doing that has an effect on the rest of the world. What if the world is a closed system and everything that I’m taking in is then working to the detriment of someone else somewhere else? This is an idea that I am interested in playing with and trying to work into something longer about heat and consumption in the U.S. Is me sitting in front of my air conditioner making someone else somewhere else hotter? This is an idea I am trying to tease out and feel the resonances of. A bodily feeling inspired me. I definitely think I am someone who is too aware of what is happening with my body. Maybe that is good in some ways for writing.
Do you follow a specific process or set of steps when editing?
My instinct is overediting and wildly deleting things so I try to go against that instinct and to draft widely in order to preserve as much of that work for as long as possible until it really feels like I need to start getting rid of things. But I think it also depends on the type of thing you’re writing. At least for me, some work is more decided by sound quality. In that case, I edit more closely quicker. Some work is more based in ideas and then I try to be much looser for longer with the words and not refine sentence level stuff as quickly.
Something I am thinking through between the first year and second year of the MFA is whether I should be submitting less polished work. What I am finding is that I try to get things up to a high level for workshop so that I’m putting my best foot forward. But then I find that work really hard to get back into because it feels like it’s finished. I am wondering if being more vulnerable about showing work that is more in process might be more beneficial and long term because then it feels like it’s something that’s still being created versus submitting finished pieces for people to critique.
I definitely read all the feedback letters that people write to me for my workshop as they come in because this is what it seems like our teachers want us to do. I’ll read through all the line edits as well after I receive them in a pretty short time. And then, if I’m being really good, I’ll synopsize the points, take from what people have said, and put them all in a document. This, I usually end up doing a few months later when I’m kind of wanting to close the chapter on the first round of revision. But I am generally taking more from big concepts than sort of line edits. But I do like to read those line edits because I feel like people have different approaches to style and it’s good to see how they think the piece might look even if that’s not how I might finish the piece.
Being at The New School is pushing me to expand my understanding of what nonfiction might be. I think I always like to start from a place of trueness. I like being grounded in some basis of reality but then where it goes from there is becoming more fluid. I wrote a piece for workshop last semester that was grounded in the history of the mall where I grew up but what I wrote about a lot of it was not strictly true.
How do you know when a piece is truly “done” and ready for publication?
I don’t know that I 100% believe in a piece being done and being ready for publication, if I’m being honest. I think I’m kind of in the camp that our work is always evolving and could always get better and that were hopefully becoming better artists over time. But I’m a big believer in just kind of putting things out there. So many forces are trying to limit who gets to say what and when. And you get into the business element of publishing … I think if you’ve got something you want to share that you think is worthwhile in some way, even if it’s not 100% finished, there’s real benefit in putting it out there and letting people read it so that it takes on a life.
I mean honestly, I’m not sending my work out for publication much yet. I think when I feel like I don’t have major questions or apprehensions about aspects of the work, I feel like when I’ve addressed most of the areas that I feel uncertain about, would be when it is ready. It wouldn’t need to be 100% perfect but I like to at least feel that I’ve tried to answer the questions that the piece brought up.
How would you describe your writing process with an image?
I do think about writing a lot as sculpting. You just want to get all the material together and collect as much clay as possible and then you can start winnowing it down into something more articulated. I like thinking about writing as something interesting emerging from a sort of formless collection of material. I think what’s key for me is trying to highlight the idea that you don’t have to write something that doesn’t look good. It kind of goes back to the drafting process. There are these layers and processes that results in the art object rather than you putting pen to paper and writing something exquisite.
What do you think makes the writing community at The New School unique?
I do think that my experience of The New School has been people who are really hungry and eager to try new things and to push the boundaries of what we think writing might look like in terms of both what the faculty gives us to read and emulate and what the other students then want to run with and what they’re interested in. It feels kind of like a post modern approach. First we have to write something extremely weird, write the weirdest stuff we possibly can just to understand what the outer limits of what you’re able to do are. I think that’s awesome for school because what other context are you going to have in your life where people will encourage you to write a poem backwards or something. I think the fact that everyone is supportive and excited about experimental work is cool.
Bio: Cleo Levin is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Slate, The Daily Beast, and Pine Hills Review. She is pursuing an MFA in nonfiction at The New School.
This interview series is produced by Hijab Ahmed