A Short Interview w/ Bill Capossere

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Bill Capossere: This story actually grew out of two other works. I drive cross-country nearly every summer for our annual hiking/camping trip, and over the years I’d noticed that I needed to clean my windshield far less frequently because there were so few insects now (there’s actually a Scandinavian scientist who has been driving his car the exact same route and speed and counting windshield bugs for nearly two decades as an experiment). I found that incredibly depressing and wrote an essay that braids the loss of insects, my mother-in-law’s recent death, and the reaction of our town and neighbors to our wild, naturalized lawn. I’ve also been working on a new play, influenced by my love of fantasy, focusing on a support group for people who years ago entered into another world (a la Narnia) for a while and just can’t get past their sadness at being back in our own mundane one. At some point, I thought, “hmmm, what if I combined (kinda sorta) those two ideas and had the insects, and other vanishing creatures, pass through portals out of our world with us left in a depressing, dying one?”

I love that as origin story! And kinda funny timing... I’ve had these two tiny little ideas for stories kinda rolling around in my brain, wondering if either might have any juice, and just this morning had the idea, maybe they’re the same story?!

Something I’ve been asking about here and there in these interviews is about moments of surprise — when something happens in a story while drafting (or revising!) that came as a surprise and how that might have pushed the story into new terrain. Can you talk some about what happened when combining the idea and/or in that transition from nonfiction to fiction?

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