A Short Interview w/ Cass Francis

"Bonus material" for Francis's short story, "The Quickest Path Between Two Points," published on Tuesday, 10/22.

Short Story, Long features long short stories, each paired with original art, published every other week. In between stories, we feature some kind of “bonus material” for each — an interview with the author, outtakes or trivia about the story, etc. The stories are always going to be available for all, for free, with the “bonus material” saved for subscribers only. Paid subscriptions help pay writers and artists.

Read “The Quickest Path Between Two Points” now if you haven’t already!

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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?

This story came from a couple different places. First, when researching for another project I read a book on the development of the US highway system — I think the book was Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life by Tom Lewis. In the book, there was a little anecdote, very brief, like a sentence or two, about a women who painted, who did not want to sell her land for a highway project because she didn't want to abandon the unique light there. When reading, I thought-- that'd be an interesting story. The second place the story came from was just my personal experience. I recently took up painting and then moved towns. Moving all the canvases was a pain and more than once I thought I should just throw them away. But then I thought-- wouldn't that be sad? Throwing away all those hours worth of work? But isn't that what most artists do anyway, sooner than later? And I began thinking about how there is meaning in the process of spending hours creating stuff, even if it ends up in a dumpster one day. Maybe I'm nihilistic thinking that, but I think it's kind of hopeful too — the meaning found in the creative process itself.

Love this answer! I started drawing and painting in the past few years and found it really interesting some of the ways it made me think anew and a little differently about art and writing. Can you talk some about your own painting, maybe any differences being being creative on a canvas vs. the page, and also and ways they may feed and influence each other?