Manic Pixie Wiccan Creatures

A weighted conversation with Nick Porisch

Cocoon is the only story I’ve ever read that gets away with referencing The Front Bottoms. It’s also the first story in a long and arduous leg of my editorial career that had me giggling like a child wondering what could possibly happen next without breaking the shimmering immersion the story worked so precisely to curate. Across our collaboration, Nick Porisch gave incredibly generous insight—into his writing style and influences and perspective—and through that partnership I came to understand that the giddiness I felt for his story most likely extended from the inviting nature of someone who simply loves life, and has talent for abstracting that joy into wonderfully intimate/interior prose.

I recently had the pleasure of bundling up for a long chat with Nick on the nature of change, perceiving the other, and making our own choices (and maybe even living with them afterward).

Connor Harding: Nick, thank you so much again for joining us for a conversation On Cocoon.

Nick Porisch: Thank you for having me! And thanks for putting so much time, thought and effort into this story.

CH: I mean same to you. I was telling you right before we started the recording that I love it when a story is willing to put its foot to the gas from the starting line. I fell in love with Cocoon on page one. I'm so happy I got to be on the editorial end with you, and to get to talk more with you about it in this context as well.

My first question for you today centers the device of the unnamed narrator. Especially when approaching works of fiction interested in character study/evolution, I always find it fascinating when a story keeps the most definitional traits of their central characters intentionally veiled as a propulsive element for the work. When writing a character is generally self-conscious and diffident as the narrator of Cocoon, how do you go about texturing the character's voice and personality while avoiding the givens of a name, bodily descriptions, or a fully fleshed personal history?

NP: It's rooted so much in voice to me. There's two different halves of character. There's backstory and there's personal history. There's what they do for work—details that scan like data. But the other half, and what (to me) is usually the part that audiences connect to, is action/voice. That's how we really find out who a person is.

With Cocoon, we have a first-person perspective. When I write first-person, I feel pretty beholden to following that character's perspective all the way through in terms of how they see things. The narrator of Cocoon is really obsessed with this idea that he's boring, or refers to himself as an NPC at times, or, just a bland, nothing person. Therefore, it felt really natural that, as the narrator, he wouldn't spend too much time on himself—because he sees himself as sort of an empty voice in this story.

What I try to focus on is letting the character seep through, his actions and his voice, like I said before. What (to me) tells the most about character is what our narrator pays attention to. What are the details they notice? What are the things that they take the time to meditate on? I think the audience reads for the same thing, whether they realize it or not. And then there’s what they physically do in the story—what they talk about, And there's this evident duality where our narrator sees himself as a boring person, and describes himself in a way that really leans into this idea that he's bland. But then, when you're reading it, and you're reading his thoughts, and you're inside his head, you're like—okay, this person is actually really observant, and they are meditating on things in ways that maybe you wouldn't expect from a boring person. Both exist. I was hoping it cemented the idea of a divide between interiority and perception from the get-go.

Sorry if that was a bit rambly (laughter).

CH: No, that absolutely makes sense. The intentionality of the “boring person” is an excellent way to give a peek into the more interior psychology of your character, with the actions still speaking louder than the words.

I remember there was a section during their date where Margaret calls our narrator something akin to the champion of self-pity. That felt like a relevant moment for examining that divide.

NP: Right.

CH: I mean my first reaction to that line was Damn, Ouch. But a lot of really interesting character work gets done through obfuscating some of those additional presumptions than a less aware character would have for themselves.

Speaking of a character's actions speaking louder than presumption, another way the story plays with that limited access to character is through our narrator's indulgence with the concept of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in relation to Margaret. Margaret never completely invites the narrator, or in extension, us as readers, into her history or interior world—but it certainly does not stop our narrator's interiority from initially projecting his fantasy of a more interesting life directly onto her for the benefit of his own feelings.

So, in this story, which seems so intensely interested in the nature of change and finding authenticity in yourself—what do you think the roles of assumption and fantasy are (or what roles do they play) in shaping the relationships these characters have with each other—or in a more meaningful way, with themselves?

NP: I think it comes down to that, in life, and maybe particularly in my life and general realm of anxieties, the divide between presentation and assumption versus authenticity defines a lot of social interactions and dynamics. Along with the ideas between that serve as social signifiers—like what you wear, what you do for work. All these things we build a presentation out of. And this is vs. the idea of action and voice being more definitive of our interior world, or who we actually are.

Margaret occupies two different roles in the story—before and after transformation—and both are defined by blanket assumptions. Prior to her transformation, she is defined in that narrator's eyes by that Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy. Like he sees this person who seems so cool and complex and interesting and chic. And we start to glimpse a little into the reality behind that, where in some ways, she is just as boring as him.

Also, as a general note, I think the word “boring”, as the story would say, is kind of an unnecessary or useless term. But she has these interests that diverge from the intended fantasy very early on and very consistently. And there's these two layers the reader works with. There's the presentation—the “Real Margaret”. And then after the transformation, she's dealing with yet another dichotomy, but now it's between a three-dimensional being and a “Monster”.

We have a very strict cultural perception of Monsters. I mean—I think culturally, we've started to get a little bit looser about them in the past 15 years. Did you realize that Frankenstein's monster is actually the victim (laughter)? We're getting more comfortable with that idea of monsters being a little bit more nuanced. But generally speaking, she’s a big scary monster, and therefore, it must be a bad thing, or a curse. It must be someone out to get her. The story peeling that back is meant to reveal there's still a three-dimensional human being at the core of this character, with wants and desires. And the narrator's journey is so innately about crossing that divide between presentation and reality, presentation and three-dimensional being. The fantasy aspect of the relationship, or that perception, is an amped-up way of over-prioritizing presentation over three-dimensional being.

Yeah, I think it's kind of impossible to talk about authenticity without talking about the presentation that you have to crack through to get to the authenticity (laughter).

CH: I think the social veneer is one of my favorite parts of the work. A quiet majority of the conversation that we had in the editorial room for Cocoon was on mentions of, you know, I've been to a Front Bottoms concert, the crux of it circling us like a shark. It so perfectly sets the tone for how performance creates unreality. And using the cultural context of monsters as a nexus for the change in the way your characters have to physically confront that way of living, or with that kind of performance is, I think, a really interesting move.

And I mean, I’ve personally never heard of anybody call something a monster with even, like, the first drop of empathy, so…

NP: Exactly. I'll tag on one more little thing. I find the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl fantasy projection is also fundamentally rooted outside of empathy. It’s a failure of empathy. That sort of connection was operating in my mind. Projecting your future onto another person that you barely know, who we then project onto the term monster. It's that same… It's rooted the exact same way.

CH: Every time I see some dork-ass guy online be like, I need a goth baddie, I want to put a cone of shame on his head.

NP: You want a drawing of a goth baddie, maybe.

CH: Literally looking at a person like a coat of paint. Oh, but speaking more about the concept of monsters, I think we’ve been hoping, skipping, and jumping around the giant moth-shaped woman in the room.

Let’s talk more about the fantastical elements of Cocoon.

We were obviously obsessed with the story once Margaret transformed and made a bento out of Sheila. Rest in peace again.

NP: Fly high, Sheila. You can never say it enough.

CH: Your story has this reliable knack for making gesture to schools of occult ritual without burrowing into analysis or logistics—which I think also helps to invite exceptional things to happen without pressuring the narrative to proverbially sell their inclusion. So, when writing Cocoon, how did you go about tempering the reader's suspension of disbelief when it comes to things Wicca, bisexual magic, and closed native practice? And what was the research process that helped to render the iconography/deities that we do get to see on the page?

NP: I'm gonna take that question in two parts. One being suspension of disbelief, and the second being research, and how that ties back into suspension of disbelief.

I always think suspension of disbelief is a really fundamental conversation alongside anything even brushing on speculative. Also a conversation that we, as writers,  hyper-focus on sometimes. To me, it all exists in character again.

In real life, I think that humans are a lot more malleable and a lot less reasonable than we like to think of ourselves. It doesn't matter how absurd it is, if it's in front of you, it's real. And, maybe there's surprise or shock to it, but, generally speaking, people absorb what's in front of them, especially if it's a problem that they have to solve. It wires your brain naturally. If we as readers are connected to the characters in the story that we're reading, when they're malleable, we're malleable. I think the worst thing that you can do for suspension of disbelief is try to hang a lantern on it. Or do something trite like the Am I on drugs or something? bit. When the character thinks it’s real, and they have to deal with it, then the reader is locked into their headspace with them.

I think a lot about magical realism and 100 Years of Solitude, and how much, from the very beginning, it sets up this idea that when the world is changing and full of new things, then magic and science don't feel very different. For characters in that book, discovering (or encountering) ice for the first time is as bizarre and surreal, if not more so, than when they find an abandoned pirate ship hundreds of miles inland. The only thing that makes something real or not real is whether or not it's in front of us.

My philosophy on suspension of disbelief is that if you're attached to a character, and your characters are having real human responses, the curve of reader reactions tends to flow pretty smoothly.

As far as research goes, it’s sort of tangential. I've kind of been immersed in social circles and friend groups who have an interest in mysticism, and especially pop mysticism, and then Wicca has just always been something of a fascination of mine. Maybe when I was in high school, I recognized how witchcraft was so ingrained in our systems of popular culture, and then later I realized that it was actually really culturally and spiritually important to people. Learning more about it meant understanding the connection real people have to traditions and ritual and legacy.

Then all of that gets supplemented with looking stuff up online and reading and talking to people passively about it. The way I think it ties back into suspension disbelief is that writers obsess over this idea that if they just research enough, and if they make it sound “real enough”, or they explain it in enough depth, then the reader will be automatically bought-in. For me, at least, that doesn't tend to work because that's not how I live my life. I know about as much about Wicca as I do about air conditioning. Even though one is ever-present in my life and one is very rarely present, I don't need to know everything about air conditioning to believe in its reality. Because it’s in front of me. You just need framework and foundation, and for our characters to feel that it's knowledgeable.

And I count myself fortunate to have known many people who are interested in Wicca and spirituality. It's something I've been interested in for a long time, so a lot of it is the rudimentary things I’ve learned from them along the way.

CH: No, hell yeah, that's fantastic. In my own life, I’ve never really gotten a chance to interact with folks who share deep roots with Wicca. That sounds like a goldmine for insight and perspective a person can’t claw out of a book.

As for the nature of suspension of disbelief, I think what you were saying earlier about perception/performance still totally applies. When it comes to things like suspension of disbelief, performance manufactures tons of disbelief in stories, even for elements and devices not purely invented within the story itself. People love what blossoms from narrative without obvious manufacturing. They love being a part of the in-joke. That consensus drives people's interactions with their own interior approval.

It's one of those things where you just gotta say oh yeah, that happened to a buddy of mine in high school, and then suddenly everybody's had that buddy in high school. You know?

NP: Yep.

CH: I also believe people's interest, knowledge, and passion on things, even as characters within fiction, are easily packaged with an amount of inherent nonchalance and confidence. They speak with so much authority. But sometimes, the naturalization of their content delivered to the reader does so much more than a perfectly-tuned description.

NP: Sometimes for me, when I'm reading something and the author is taking a heavy approach to description I feel a bit… off. I love when someone is very knowledgeable, and when that knowledge is evident in a piece, but sometimes that comes with this feeling of never wanting the reader to feel like they have been invited into the work. As soon as I’m aware the author is trying to convince me that I should believe something, that I am required to be immersed in their approach—that really takes me out of it. Nonchalance is absolutely crucial.

CH: Fiction itself, I think, is a kind of beautifully interactive construction. If you go to a museum where the plaque is bigger than the actual thing on display it’s probably a pretty shit museum.

NP: Yo. (Laughter)

CH: And like, in every craft book for the past 50 years, people say less is more. Over and over, into perpetuity. I think sometimes that's trivializing. I love work like you do—just allowing things to be on the page, influenced by your own experience and the ways you have both empathized and connected people in your life. That makes for, I think, fantastic presentation.

NP: Building one more thing off this, but a core philosophy of mine is that any piece of writing is collaborative. It's not finished on the page, it's finished in the reader's mind. So meeting them halfway, and letting them lay some of their own groundwork is pretty essential in making a story effective.

CH: Fantastic segue, because now that we're talking more about collaborative processes and working with friends, we can talk more about Caleb. The narrator and Caleb navigate the intersection in their friendship between camaraderie and selfish desires through a lot of strictly-set roles. Caleb being the very cool but unreliable one, and the narrator being a bland and placid neutralizer, but also somebody that keeps Caleb metaphorically in-check.

However,  between the two, the reader also gathers a sense of real understanding and authentic/expressive care when things get difficult or tense. So, what is your process as a writer for rendering a friendship that actually feels like a friendship? And additionally, do you see the bond between Caleb and our narrator as the kind of friendship that's gonna last a lifetime, or until the lease is up?

NP: I was super interested in this question, because a lot of friendships (or even successful roommate interactions) comes down to a pairing of two things. One is that ever since I was around 10 years old, I've had that one quote from Rocky in my head—successful relationships are this idea of everyone having gaps. And Rocky's like I've got gaps, she's got gaps, together we fill gaps. I love the idea of that absence bringing people together.

The other part of successful friendships is that you have differences that fall into sync (at least sometimes) paired with a fundamental decency. Hopefully it’s evident in the narrator and Caleb's relationship. They're very different people, and they sort of ping off each other, but sometimes in a way where they also have something to offer one another. But there’s also a thread of decency—this is the person I live with, and therefore I take care of them. In the closest friendships and roommate situations I've had, that’s typically a part of its foundations. Especially for roommates, when you get randomly paired together by some college dorm system, or met each other through a mutual friend, or both happened to be moving to the same city, or whatever else brings roommates together.

Because we live ten feet away from each other, we're gonna see each other every day, and suddenly we're kind of family (laughter).

I wanted to let that dynamic breathe on the page—as much as Caleb gives narrator shit for Modern Family and The Front Bottoms, the narrator is also a safe foundation. He's a safe space. He's stable. He's reliable. And for the narrator, Caleb is someone who pushes him out of his comfort zone and gives him a window into another world. And then at the same time, they maybe aren't as different as they perceive each other to be. I mean Caleb uses the word baddie out of the blue (almost bro-y in a way), and when he encounters Devi later, I think the reader recognizes that while Caleb has encountered a lot in his world, he may not actually know all that much compared to someone immersed more completely in those practices (like Wicca). They have these differences and ways of showing decency for each other, tied into camaraderie, helps show the similarities that exist beneath the (perceived) differences.

And I love this question of whether or not they'll be lifetime friends. Once I write the last word of the story—to me—the characters are free. I don't usually speculate on where all they're gonna go. Sort of like when I get the end of Breakfast of Champions, if you've read that. But this got me thinking. You know my immediate sense? They are probably two people who are going to be really close for a while, but then are inevitably going to sort of be on different life tracks. Maybe ten, fifteen years from now, they are not necessarily close friends, but they keep up every once in a while, and see each other’s lives on social media, and text, and do lots of reminiscing.

I can imagine that the narrator would probably be very disconcerted with that.

CH: Oh no yeah. I mean who wouldn’t?

NP: Because I know that's the type of thing that would make me very anxious and disconcerted. I’d just think that's so sad. That's so sad. But I think Caleb would have more wisdom. There's a metaphor a friend of mine told me once when I was going through a breakup. He told me everyone you ever meet is a ring in an oak tree. You're  a tree, and you're always growing outwards and upwards. And everyone you know is a ring that ends up involved in that growth. Where maybe they're not there on the surface anymore, they remain within you. I can see Caleb being a little bit more at peace in that way. Maybe he’d even pass that along to our narrator.

CH: That's a very real and a very comforting answer to both ends of those questions. I've had a lot of roommates in the past. The presence of roles as you described them are definitely there when you live with strangers. Familial bond, making the village between yourselves to take care of each other. Even if one of you has never once in your entire life done the dishes—

NP: Right, yeah (laughter).

CH: Day-to-day living sculpts an entirely different kind of bond. Honestly I think it’s one almost best-suited to split apart over years. Because you keep the empathy for them in a way that other friendships don’t get to make, and that doesn’t go away with distance. I really gel with your take on Caleb and the narrator for that reason. And beyond that—I think the relationships that crack and settle into those rings are some of the most necessary a person can ever get.

In Cocoon, I think the narrator very desperately wants to change, you know? Staying the same with Caleb probably isn’t the thing he’s yearning for when he's opening the fridge looking for the salmon oil. I don’t know if that feeling would ever find him again if things stayed as they are in the dramatic present.

NP: Absolutely. I think acknowledging and accepting goodbyes and transitions is a fundamental component of change. It takes a staggering amount of grace and maturity. To a degree, I think that is also present in the story. Being okay that people are going to change, and people are going to leave. Transformed (into moths) or otherwise.

CH: (laughter)

Yeah, no, 100%.

And I think with that, I have only one more craft-intensive question.

NP: Go for it.

CH: I wanted to save this for the end, because I found it to be an individually striking element in the work. This question focuses on your dialogue-writing, and how conversations in the story works to inform the prose that it bookends.

I distinctly remember the first time I read Devi spelling out the situation to the narrator in its clearest terms. Where, after so many pages of more indirect banter, she just says she made herself into a fucking monster, dickhead.

NP: Yeah.

CH: Like we’ve seen so many fantastical things by this point in the story, and get so immersed in them, and we're so interested in the interior maze of characters and their aesthetics and the presumptions characters have about one another, and then along comes one of the simplest statements in the entire piece. And it stands out completely in the bramble of other conversations. It really surprised me, and it made me even more surprised later when the narrator sticks to his guns and commits to his stance on Margaret's autonomy, even as this “monster”, by letting her escape without changing her back.

In fiction, I find the power of dialogue often exists in its ability to split and subvert the tone and rhythm of whatever's occurring within the scenework, or a character's interiority, or whatever's existing in the block prose above or below it. I see that kind of clashing duality happening a lot in your writing style.

So here’s my question for you. When drafting dialogue between two characters, how do you keep their conversation in a space that feels organic to the context of the scene while still serving to complicate and subvert the work that you're doing outside of their vocal conversation?

NP: I've really been meditating on and thinking about this one. I'm always a pretty character-driven writer in terms of how scenes and dynamics come together. Every character has to have a perspective, and those perspectives almost always have to clash, right? They're going to change one another, and they're going to bounce back, and they’re going to build off one another.

And a sort of fundamental creative philosophy of mine—this oddly enough goes back to a quote I think about a lot from Duckworth by Kendrick Lamar (laughter). Which is absolutely incredible narrative poetry you can read, regardless of it being a song. But there’s a line towards the end of the story he’s telling to contextualize the relationship between people in the song that goes You take two people and put them in random predicaments, give them a soul so they can make their own choices and live with it. I think a lot of the stories we write are fundamentally about that.

As writers, we’re putting characters in strange situations, and trying to give them as much agency as we can to make their own choices and live with their consequences. Dialogue is rooted to character, and so it's inherently gonna be dynamic and serve agency. Conversation will push and pull against each other. The duality with prose description comes from the fact our narrator in this story is also a character in the story. Descriptive prose acts as a third voice in this conversation, which is coming from (we as readers presume) a later perspective. The narrator is telling the story, and he knows what's gonna happen, because he's already lived through it. But when describing conversation that’s been experienced, it doesn’t exclude all of the context and groundwork of the descriptive prose, which becomes that third voice with its own dynamic perspective.

Even when the two characters talking are unaware of the third voice (of future perspective), it is still there, pinging between them and interrupting their dialogue.

I think about this a lot in terms of dialectics as well. You have a thesis, and you have an antithesis, and then those two things clash, and you get a synthesis. That’s my subjective human experience of conversation, or maybe just what I focus on or think about. Maybe most conversations are like that in some small way. Even when my friend and I were talking about something trivial, like me not liking orange juice. They’ll say well have you tried this other brand with less pulp? Or one that’s sweeter? And then I consider if all my bias is based on brand. In that exchange, the same tension exists between thesis (not liking OJ), antithesis (I haven’t tried every brand of juice to exist), and synthesis (maybe I’ll try another with less pulp). We're coming out with sort of a merged thing, and I feel that’s a major part of it.

For dialogue specifically, I love that you highlighted that line from Devi. Because that is something that I think is exemplary of what I try to do with my dialogue. A lot of times we're sort of taught that characters don't say the subtext, you know? People say they dance around it. Especially in screenwriting, there's this advice about finishing your draft before going through, and anytime the character is saying the subtext, it needs rewritten so that they're saying something elusive of the subtext—of how they feel. And I do think that that's mostly true. We sort of dance around our feelings and our real thoughts. A lot of times because we're still figuring them out. But I also think it's more common than what is presented in fiction that conversation is communication.

If someone knows how they feel or knows what they want to say, and if they're more forward of a person, people do frequently say what they feel. If they want you to know how they feel, they're gonna say how they feel, and gain moments of lucidity in dialogue that are, I think, very impactful. That’s something I actually overuse in my writing—I hedge with phrases like Listen, or The fact of the matter is… like dude, let’s just cut to the chase! She turned herself into a fucking monster. That’s what we’re talking about right now. Sometimes it needs to cut through the dance, and the decision to do that is very much tied to character.

I hope that answers the question (laughter). I feel like I still want to reflect on that for a while.

CH: I like to think anybody that writes is constantly reflecting. I really hope nobody ever finds a quote-unquote endpoint to it (laughter). Bringing up Duckworth was really interesting too, because the lyric is essentially saying that what we are is context, personhood, action and consequence. That covers the wide swath of human connection.

NP: I really love that song, it’s incredibly powerful.

CH: Considering literary dialogue through those tenants, and reinforcing it with conversation about thesis, antithesis, and synthesis creates a wonderful sense of motion. Like agreement and dissonance. Literally a push and pull, like you said earlier.  Because nobody (Thank God) is the exact same person as somebody else.

NP: Exactly.

CH: Also, doesn’t Duckworth start with a line like It was always me versus the world until I found it's me vs. me? 

NP: I believe so, yes.

CH: That feels wildly applicable to Cocoon, too. The nature of change being tied up into characters who are deeply interior and expressive helps to beat back that tap dance that is so generally overdone in literary fiction. I honestly really hate that trope sometimes. I have never once in my life met a person who avoids the elephant in the room forever without eventually getting trampled on—you know? We invite the elephant to sit on the couch eventually. We love the elephant. So granting those characters that proverbial soul so they can make their own choices and live with it works wonders in creating partnership (with the prose).

NP: No, yeah. Being from the Midwest, there's this culture of passive aggressiveness, or like not talking about the elephant. But when they do happen, the most productive conversations start with hey, I think we've been dodging around this. Let's talk about it. So I feel people sometimes love the tap dance more than the elephant, but the idea that dancing is all we do feels completely unreal to me.

CH: Well, that’s the last bulky, craft-intensive question I had for you. The last one is singular, and maybe a bit silly.

NP: Love it. Go for it.

CH: Like there’s no academic or craft-level wind up here. But at what point in your writing process did your mental image just come to the idea of a Tinder date transforming into a moth and eating a dog? You know?

NP: (Laughter)

CH: Was it the first thing that came to mind? Did you have a particularly bad e-date you would like to share with us? Or otherwise, if there's no specific answer, when did you just recognize that a hard leap into magical realism, (i.e. 100 Years of Solitude) was the move that you wanted to make for this piece?

NP: I think I'm gonna open my answer with one last piece of craft commentary. Just addressing genre, or speculative, or magical realist, or whatever term for non-real elements in fiction. And my note is that genre elements are fundamentally tools of abstraction. It goes back to that literary advice of you don't talk about the war, you talk about the child's burning sock outside of the rubble, or whatever. Speculative inclusions are at their most powerful when abstracting a deep emotion that grows too large or difficult to capture at other angles. Or even the quote-unquote literary fiction angle.

Everything I write tends to have some speculative element, and I think that’s where it comes from. The desire for abstraction. This is another media reference, but if you take The Terminator, which is like the most action-movie action movie ever made, and close read it, it becomes less about Arnold Schwarzenegger coming to kill you, and more about time, fate, and inevitable destiny. It asks questions about what could possibly be powerful enough to circumvent something like that? I love that movie, and a lot of that appreciation comes from the speculative nature of it. It goes as deep as you allow it, when you abstract real things into non-real things.

So, that is to say, the magical realism stuff started from the very beginning. The idea of the moth didn’t, fortunately, come from an e-date though. It came from my incredible partner. We live in Minnesota, so in the winter it gets crazy cold. So she will totally bundle up, and when we go to bed at night, she has a big weighted blanket and all the quilts and stuff. And to me, much like the narrator mentions, it looks a little claustrophobic. She was the one who said it feels like a cozy cocoon. So that's bouncing around in my head, and then I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or whatever, I come back, and it's dark in our room, and she's buried under all these blankets…

CH: (laughter)

NP: It's dark, so I can't even see her face. And my half-asleep brain—the way it runs and constantly extrapolates things into weird, off-kilter ideas—I had this thought, like gosh, I hope it's still her under there. I don't actually know. I would have to peel back these blankets to know for sure this is still the person I fell asleep next to. Or did someone sneak in and replace her when I was sleeping?

Those two things kind of came together to form this fundamental idea of falling asleep next to someone wearing a weighted blanket and them transforming, along with my partner actually calling it her cocoon, which felt like a really vivid image to tie things to. That goes back into what I was sort of rambling about with speculative inclusion. Why does this image have an impact on me? Why does it make my stomach feel weird, or why does it make my heart sore, and what is the psychological process at play? It helped me realize the story was about change, and equally about intimacy.

From there, the story sort just kept evolving (no pun intended) from a fun flash piece. And then, I wrote more, I was thinking about, strangely enough, the idea of it being a movie. I was working with a screenwriting manager at the time. He told me to pitch ideas, and I said okay, well, I got this idea, and did some real work on the full outline. I got the feedback right away. He said it was too weird and he didn’t get it at all. We'd end up not working together very long. But I had this sort of lengthier outline, and I decided to take the dive and let it breathe. Let it focus on character and be weird and be inspired by the city I live in. Everything.

As for poor Sheila, the answer is quite callous. The narrator is waking up in a room with a monster, and we need something shocking or horrifying, or even a little bit gory to happen. I think this story couldn’t exist the way it does if Margaret diced up Caleb. It would be a different level of woah! than intended. So it ended up being Sheila, because it showcased a more wild animal dynamic between Margaret, her moth form, and a tiny pomeranian. It lessened the intensity by a few degrees— like the stories online of hawks picking wiener dogs out of yards or whatever.

CH: I was gonna say, it would be a tall order to maintain a three-dimensional human inside the monster if they immediately cannibalize a roommate.

NP: Exactly (laughter). I'm sorry, Sheila. I hope she’s doing well in doggy heaven.

CH: You know, there’s something really nice about learning the cocoon itself is based on the habits of somebody you really love. It’s touching that everything loops back to love in one way or another.

NP: Yeah, for sure.

CH: I also completely agree also with the ability of magical realism and genre to abstract more core emotions and present them in a way that is both more alluring and expressive. Literary fiction loves taking those kinds of swings in the stuffiest way humanly possible, and it makes me yearn for a moth to break through my window, you know?

NP: Yeah (laughter). Also, I want to note that I really love literary fiction, too. I wish I had the brain to be able to take everyday living and make it sing and feel exciting. But I gotta express my emotions somehow, and I guess monsters, ghosts, and robots are the way I best do it. Maybe that loops back into performance and interiority again. It’s how I work to bridge that divide as a creative person, and as a result, that’s how it becomes real to me.

Interview Time: 55 minutes 34 Seconds