Spotlight On…

Today we talk to Sheldon Lee Compton about ghosts, duct-tape, and honesty.

Tell us about the first story you remember writing.

The first story I wrote, really sat down and wrote, was called “The Last Flight.”  I was twelve and reading a lot of Stephen King.  The story was about…wait for it…a haunted airplane. It was horrible and so I won’t go into the plot or anything, but I did write a scene I still remember because my family found it sickening and that pleased me. I had a scene where a pilot’s mouth was duct-taped and he was tied to the chair in the front cabin. The plane has been sabotaged by a ghost so it’s heading toward a mountain. The plane takes a sudden dip and the pilot throws up but the duct-tape, you know, sort of cuts that off. I was proud of that sick moment. Still am.

How often do you struggle with your writing? Or does it come easily?

I guess when the stories aren’t coming, that’s my struggle. I don’t have the idea that a writer should sit down and just make it happen or work through a time of low production or whatever. If I’m not feeling it, then I don’t sit down to work. When I am, it’s a pretty quick process in some cases and then in at other times not so much. Flash fiction, understandably, happens fast for me, and it’s either good and I feel that it’s good, or it’s shit and I know that too and just toss it. Longer stories or novels (of which I’ve written three terrible ones) are the director’s cut version. I’ve spent three years writing a bad novel and longer short stories are usually about a month-long obligation. But my struggle is when there’s nothing on tap. I want to write but can’t.  It’s has all the same qualities of a extended hospital stay for me.

Describe your typical writing environment.

At one time I could write just about anywhere and under any number of conditions, but I’ve grown spoiled in the past five years. I need to have a computer. No more days of writing stories in longhand on the park bench, etc. Also, I can’t listen to music while working and that sucks because music is an influence on my writing. So really, my typical writing environment is most often at my computer at the newspaper where I work. The beauty in that situation is that if my
boss happens to glance at the screen, there’s nothing to indicate that I’m working on something outside my general duties for news articles when, in fact, I’m writing fiction. I know. I’m a little shady, not to mention always rushed for deadlines.

What’s your favorite story you’ve written? Why?

I don’t spend much time thinking about stories I’ve written, but there’s a few that stick in my mind when I do look back.  ”Somebody Take Care of Little Walter,” a story inspired by the harp player for Muddy Waters, is one, I guess. I like writing stories about tragic figures in music and Little Walter was an alcoholic who just happened to be the best harmonica player who ever lived. I was also able to bookend the plot line with some Hank Williams references that gave the main character more depth, I think, so this story was hitting all the right nerves for me while I was working on it.

What’s the last book that you loved?

I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down, by William Gay. That collection just tore my head off. Gay is the best writer of southern literature out there right now and is, strangely, so rarely mentioned.

Does reading online influence your writing style? How would your work change if you lost access to the Internet for a year?

Reading online does influence my writing. I started focusing on flash fiction again (I had flirted with it while studying for my MFA) after reading online more frequently over the past couple years, for one thing. Also microfiction. I remember coming across Joe Young’s micro pieces at some point and just becoming obsessed with condensing my own work down to a single feeling while retaining the promise of a larger story. These aren’t things that would have happened for me as a reader without the Internet, and for that I’m grateful. A year off the grid would probably not change how approach work at this point, but it would be difficult. I’ve grown to rely on so many writers I come across online to continually inspire me to work harder and write better. I would miss their voices.

Many of your stories deal in a honest sort of human experience. They truck in sex, relationships, death, fundamental experiences of the human condition. Is there any reason to write about anything else? Is there anything else to write about?

I guess there are other topics or themes and other reasons to write about them, but much of it will still, at least in some way, refer back to the human condition and the writer’s responsibility to present his work about this condition in as honest a way as he knows how. For me, I bring a lot of the melancholy aspects of life to the table and I’m aware of it. Even when I write about love, it seems, there’s a slice of darkness somewhere. Storytellers bring big parts of themselves to the work and mine has been a jagged life, so that’s where I take readers. If I were instead a folk singer who sang sad songs, though, I could at least tell jokes between sets to lighten the mood. Ten years from now, maybe I’ll be writing about something else, but I doubt it.

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Sheldon Lee Compton survives in Kentucky. His work has appeared most recently in >kill author, Ramshackle Review and Metazen. To learn more, visit him in a Bent Country.