With descriptions like “George Clooney, with a bad hangover,” it’s impossible not to be intrigued by one of the many characters found in Michelle Cheever’s collection of shorts stories, You’ll Miss Me But That’s Good. Cheever, who served as managing editor of The Emerson Review, is a Writing, Literature & Publishing BFA senior whose book was published by Wilde Press, more commonly known at Emerson as the Book Pub Club. Founded by a group of undergraduate students, the Pub Club publishes two manuscripts a year through the Harvard Book Store. Cheever’s is the latest book, following last semester’s I am Happy You Are Here written by Sean Van Deuren.
Cheever’s stories, which follow the lives of various women, convey both physical and emotional struggles. The aforementioned Clooney character plays the boyfriend (nay, sugar daddy) of a young actress looking to pay off student loans. Despite the odds, she falls in love with him. In another story, Cheever details the inner monologue of a woman who takes yoga as a part of her grief counseling. Her cynicism and overall negative attitude toward those around her draws the protagonist of the story (Automat) to cheat on her girlfriend with a widower she meets in class one afternoon. Cheever uses instinctive prose to describe the guilt; “And she touches me and I am so hollow. I could break apart under her fingertips.”
Cheever recently sat down with Her Campus Emerson and shared what inspires her, along with how Emerson has affected her writing.
Q: What inspires you as a writer?
A: Really small things inspire me as a writer. For example, I go to a toddler music class as a nanny, and for the first few weeks, everyone accidentally called a baby “Carter” instead of “Carson.” I want to write a story [about how] this goes on for a year. The next step would be to dream up the sort of mother who would let her baby be called the wrong name for a year. And that’s how most of my stories start. Poetry inspires me, as well.
Q: What did you hope to get out of Emerson’s WLP program? How have classes affected the way you write or share your work?
A: When I was younger, I probably hoped to get a full-length novel out of Emerson’s WLP program, which is very impractical. What Emerson did give me was time and space to write, and people to encourage me along the way. They, and the school in general, made me believe that writing is worthwhile and important, and not something I should give up. The classes keep you writing with deadlines, but it’s the sharing of work that keeps you inspired.
Q: Do you find any similarities between you and your characters? How much of yourself do you lend to your stories?
A: I’m not sure I understand either myself well enough, nor my characters well enough, to find similarities between us. I give them parts of myself, parts of other people, and parts of people I don’t even know, because my characters exist in the world we live in. But, it is such shoddy patchwork that I couldn’t tell you what comes from where, and mainly, I wouldn’t want to.
Q: How did you go about writing You’ll Miss Me But That’s Good?
A: The stories were written over the course of three years and edited endlessly. If you mean, “How did I actually write them?” I wrote them in bed with dirty hair, on my computer, and from scraps of paper with phrases on them. And I was jittery. Writing makes me more jittery than coffee.
Q: What was the publishing process like? How did Emerson Book Pub Club help you?
A: I sent my collected stories to the Pub Club. Once I was selected, I worked with several editors through two editing sessions: one for larger, plot edits, and the last for more copyediting details. Everyone was very helpful. It was a communicative process.
Q: What other things are you working on currently?
A: Currently, I am attempting my first novel. It is an expansion of “The Lovelier Girl,” which appears in my story collection.