Welcome to the second edition of On Writing. For December, my guest is the amazing writer-turned-poet wenyi xue, from writing of wenyi xue. wenyi’s writing is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen here, a mix of prose and poetry which makes the most alluring result. Besides her main blog, she also writes on writing (see? we were meant to be) a second publication all about her writing process, and even some original essays she doesn’t feel comfortable posting on her main Substack.
If you aren’t familiar with wenyi’s work, check out her blog asap! My favorite pieces from her are the cannibalism metaphor and we fear no god but each other. Her writing feels almost like a religious experience with the way her words hit us, and for that reason, I was so curious to talk to her and understand better her sources of inspiration and how she became a writer; let me tell you, she doesn’t disappoint! So let’s get to it.
1. Thank you so much for accepting this interview! I love your Substack and your beautiful writing. I was wondering, what were some authors you read as a young person who inspired you?
Thank you for having me!
I think some of the earliest authors I adored were Lemony Snicket, Margaret Peterson Haddix, and Gail Carson Levine. I remember the highlight of my week in elementary school was library day. There was another kid at my school that was reading A Series of Unfortunate Events at the same time that I was and I remember absolutely seething one week because they checked out the next book in the series before I could.
2. What about some books that changed the way you write?
My biggest sources of inspiration for my own writing are actually usually poetry collections or books that blur the line between poetry and prose so much that it’s hard to classify. I’m a huge fan of Richard Siken’s Crush, K-Ming Chang’s Organ Meats, and Grendel Menz’s Fracture. I also think that Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water, definitely had a massive impact on how I write; I definitely take a lot of inspiration from her.
3. Was there any main event in your life that made you resort to writing? Or was writing something you always loved doing?
So, funny story: my grandfather recently sent me an essay I wrote when I was around 10 that I had absolutely no recollection of writing. It was honestly a super pretentious essay, but I was surprised by how passionate I (or I guess, younger me) came across in the writing. And I think I almost had to be a writer, even from the age of 10, because I always had so much I wanted to say about everything. I was definitely a too-in-their-own-head type of kid, but not necessarily in a bad way. I would make up a lot of stories in my head and, I know it’s cliche to say, but I think I really was “always writing” in a sense.
4. As a writer myself, I know that reading is one of the most important things for a writer to have in his routine. Can you tell us a bit about your reading habits?
I cycle between a variety of media formats – I have months where I’m really into novels and then I’ll have a month where I’m really into poetry and then it’ll be memoirs and then it’ll be mixed media and so on. When it comes to books, I like to read the entire book in one sitting and usually I’ll have a novel phase where I’ll read 2-3 books in a week before I don’t pick up another book again for at least a month or so. When it comes to actual routines, reading manhwa is my version of “needing a YouTube video playing while you eat” and I also tend to catch up on manhwa right before I go to bed. I usually read my friends’ Substack articles on Monday mornings or Saturday afternoons because I put a lot of intention behind how I read them – I wrote about this briefly here:
And then I also follow quite a few poets and poetry blogs on tumblr, which I lurk on occasionally.
5. What was the best advice you were given about writing?
A poem should be a push and pull experience with your audience where they’ll “get it” and then not “get it” and then “get it” again. If you want to make art that’s true to the art you want to make, you have to sacrifice understandability sometimes and be comfortable with the spaces where your audience isn’t going to “get it.” I was told this by a high school teacher and it’s the most important thing to remember during the editing process – ten different people will have ten different edits on the same line and part of being a writer is being able to tell which of the ten you want to listen to or if you don’t want to listen to any of them at all.
6. If you could start over in your journey, what would you do differently? If anything at all.
I feel I’ve had a very lucky and very good start – honestly I think I’m struggling more now than I did in the beginning so maybe we can circle back to this question in three months and ask that version of me what she’d do differently now. But jokes aside, I think I’d try to be more consistent. There’s a few notes here and there that I somewhat regret posting, but I think that’s also a you-live-and-you-learn thing. In general, I don’t really believe in regrets because I believe every mistake has to be made in order for me to learn the lesson behind the mistake. But maybe I’d reach out to @fishinapool and @couppolas and @hummingbirdoutlaw and @angelicdissent earlier.
7. I believe all art forms are important and can be inspiring for us, so let’s talk about movies. What are your top 4 films on letterboxd and why?
Bones and All, Sorry To Bother You, Poor Things, All Cheerleaders Die. “Bones and All” is the obvious one. I really loved “Sorry To Bother You” because it had this incredibly sharp wit where the timing of every joke was perfect and it had some really goofy moments, but didn’t shy away from touching difficult political matters. That movie is genuinely a knife – the humor is sharp and it doesn’t get too scared of the reaction to shy away from saying what it wants to say, which I think is important for all good art. “Poor Things” because Yorgos Lanthimos is my favorite filmmaker and it’s this beautiful semi-metaphorical bildungsroman that manages to cover so much without getting too greedy. And finally, “All Cheerleaders Die” because I was obsessed with Tracy.
8. So many famous writers keep journals, do you keep one as well? And if so, do you think journaling influenced or bettered your writing?
In a way, Substack has become my journal. I feel like the notes section of this app would be like the highlight reel of if-I-kept-a-journal. I’ve always found it hard to keep a journal or diary because I’m the least routine-d person I know – I’ll have a habit for months and then the second something unexpected comes up in my schedule, that habit’s gone forever. So I’ve tried to keep journals before, but usually I’d end up losing them and starting a new one and then finding the notebook later on and repurposing it. So I guess the answer is yes and no because I do journal, but not in an organized sense – I have three Google drive accounts that all have a scattering of Google docs that could be considered journaling and then I have quite a few physical notebooks that contain both journal entries and website passwords (don’t do this as it’s a security risk; do as I say not as I do!). In terms of bettering my writing, I go back and sift through all the different places I keep my writing often, so it’s definitely bettered my writing in the sense that a lot of my pieces are this mismatched quilt of different ideas I’ve written at different times.
9. What’s your favorite and least favorite writer? And why?
Favorite is definitely Sayaka Murata. I’ll say this over and over again but if I was only allowed to read one writer for the rest of my life, I’d go with Murata. Every author has their own voice and a lot of times I’ll get sick of an author’s writing after reading too much by them because even if the plot’s different, there’s too much of a pattern. But I’d never get sick of Murata.
Least favorite... the low hanging fruit here would be to say Colleen Hoover, but I’ve also never actually read any of her books (shoutout to that recent @postcardsbyelle deep dive on CoHo; Elle is a stronger person than I ever could be to get through all that). In terms of authors I’ve actually read, I’ve never really liked Lois Lowry’s style although I still think she’s an excellent writer and I really, really hate Claire Lombardo because her writing makes me feel like I’m trapped in a room with someone I hate but have to pretend to like for some asinine reason.
10. If you could give advice to a young writer who’s just beginning their journey on Substack, what would you tell them?
Focus on writing, focus on reading. Figure out what it is you want to accomplish and then throw yourself at that goal with everything you got, but also be honest with yourself about what you want to accomplish. Once you know what that is, it’s much easier to filter out all the other white noise. And also, be kind.
11. How would you describe your writing style? And how was your writing journey to get where you are?
I’d call my style a blend of poetry and memoir-esque writing. I actually wrote a lot of short stories when I was in middle school, but all of them were really garbage. I realized about halfway through high school that I was terrible at writing actual stories with a coherent narrative or plot and I was equally bad at writing dialogue, but I had a bit of a knack for finding metaphors in everything. I also started reading a lot more poetry at the time, so I pivoted towards writing a lot of poetry. In college, I’d often get sudden bouts of homesickness where I’d want to update all my friends from high school on recent events in my life and I’d start sending out these three-page long PDFs detailing everything I’d been doing and one of my friends was like “you have such a distinct voice in these” and the rest (as they say) is history.
12. I feel like the big creators on Substack only interact and recommend the same writers over and over. Do you read any small blogs? If so, which ones do you recommend? Keep them under 1K subscribers.
I remember when I was just starting out on Substack, it was a lot easier to find smaller writers, but I feel the Substack algorithm hasn’t been doing as well recently in terms of giving me stuff I’m interested in reading. Although, in a very “I was into them before they were cool” way, a lot of the writers I follow were below 1K when I followed them so I get to say “I knew them before they were famous!” about a lot of them. Currently, I can’t recommend @thewretchedmaid (IMO the most underrated!), @iraloves, @becomewoven, @hummingbirdoutlaw (that’s my very real cousin that is definitely related to me), @thedespitesystem, @divisive, @fishinapool, and @amandapyen enough!
That was so interesting. I don’t know about you but I was taking notes of all her tips and recommendations! I still can’t believe wenyi accepted to be interviewed for this series, and I feel incredibly honored to have her in my little Substack. It’s because of writers like her that I keep on going day after day, with the belief that one day I’ll get to that level of excellence without losing my kindness, and generosity towards writers with a smaller platform.
Thank you again wenyi for participating and please, give her a follow and subscribe to her blog! Don’t forget to leave a like and comment who you’d like to see featured next in the series. Thank you for reading and as always, I’ll see you next month!
on writing: interview with amanda
On Writing is a series of interviews I’ll post monthly about writing with writers I admire from Substack. I’m so happy and honored to launch this project; I believe it will benefit all of us, from small creators to big ones. It’s fascinating to learn how good writers were influenced, how they got into writing, what inspires them, etc. What I want you to…
this was such a lovely interview! thanks so much for sharing
I really liked the writing advice part. I run into this issue quite a lot, that people who read my poetry wonder if they “got it” or “understood it right” and I always tell them it doesn’t matter if they understood what I meant, it matters if it made them feel something. If you can feel it, you got it. Relax.