An interview with Carolyn Divish

Hello, Callers! Thanks for being here.

“Devil in the Details,” Carolyn Divish’s story of cubicle farm chaos, struck a chord with readers last week. If you’re trying to survive your own 9-to-5 today, take a break and read our conversation with Carolyn, in which we discuss office oddballs, reading bad fiction, and how running a marathon helped prepare her for writing a novel.

COLD CALLER: There’s a lot in this story that will ring true for anyone who’s ever worked in a cubicle farm. Where did the idea for this piece come from?

CAROLYN DIVISH: A few years ago, I left a job at a struggling tech company for the safety of an insurance company. I missed the joy of 3 pm dance breaks, Friday beer wagon, rubber-band battles, and other silliness. But I didn’t miss the threat of layoffs. In my new team, I was an oddball.

I think coworkers tend to match their team’s personality in a Tolkien sort of way—orcs and elves. But there’s always that one person who doesn’t match in the same way. Either they really were different, or they wanted to be seen as different. At the insurance company, that person was me. The team was perfectly nice, but I was just a little different. Not that I was the character in my story, though. I’ve never met anyone like him.

(Maybe shooting rubber bands at my new coworkers was a misjudgment?)

As much as the narrator insists he just wants to fade into the background and disappear, he also spends a lot of his time screwing with coworkers to see if they’ll notice. Do you see him as an unreliable narrator, or is there something else going on?

I think one could see him as unreliable, but I don’t see him as a classical example of it. When he wants to fade into the background, I think he means it. His blandness is his predatory camouflage.

He’s bored. He’s in the stage of his career where he’s not being challenged. He’s not management material, so there’s not much room to progress. Because of that, he’s confident that he’s the smartest person in the room. Maybe he’s as smart as he thinks he is. Maybe not. In any case, he’s the cat in a room of mice. No one is calling him on it, but he’d love to be. He wants someone to rise to his challenge, to have a spy-versus-spy battle, but I don’t think he wants the full reveal. That would take the fun away.

What’s your writing process like? Do you follow a regular routine for writing and revision?

I don’t. I wish I did. I try to write every day, but it slips sometimes. Writing comes in jags.

When did you first start writing fiction? Was there anyone who especially encouraged you along the way?

I didn’t start writing until after my children were born. I’d just run a full marathon in San Francisco and my sister suggested that if I could run 26.2 miles, I could complete a novel. So I did. Starting by writing a 100-thousand-word novel was ambitious—and the end result was terrible—but it taught me what I didn’t know. I could grow from there. Her support has meant a lot to me. She’s a much better writer than I am. Our styles are completely different. We don’t share work, but we root for each other.

One thing I especially enjoyed about this story was that it’s structured as a series of escalating reversals. How much do you think about story structure as you’re writing? How much of this story was shaped during revision?

This was one of the easiest stories I’ve written. Or maybe, more accurately, I agonized the least about it. It’s pretty close to its first-draft structure, but I still had plenty to fix. Often, I have to retell a story multiple times to get the structure right. This one was a happy accident.

Which books or writers have had the biggest impact on your own style?

I don’t know if I can narrow it down. I live by the advice to read widely and voraciously. If I don’t like a book, I’ll still finish it. My goal is to understand what I didn’t like. Maybe that’s the biggest impact.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? What about the worst?

The best is to write drunk and edit sober. Not that I do that, but writing is best when you can just let go and allow the story to fall out. Issues can be fixed later.

The worst is to write what you know. Every story is a combination of things you know and situations that are new.

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Hailing from Indianapolis, Indiana, Carolyn Divish received an MFA from Butler University. Her stories have been featured in Baltimore Gothic, 100-foot Crow, Coachella Review, Silver Birch Press, Wild Word, and others. She can occasionally be found on a few socials @carolyndivish.