A Short Interview w/ Chloe Clark

"Bonus material" for Chloe Clark's short story, "The Rushing Waves," published on Tuesday, 8/21.

The plan for Short Story, Long is to feature long short stories, each paired with original art. A new story will publish every week, on Tuesdays, and then, in between stories, we are going to 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 Rushing Waves,” 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?

Chloe Clark: This one was actually written, in its very first draft, when I was in grad school—so a decade ago. I had written a few stories that touched on the submarine disaster, that is mentioned in this one, and so the sub story was floating around in my head and I knew I wanted to write the story about David—the son whose father had worked on submarines . Then I was reading an article on whales, as one does, and it was talking about different motivations behind their calls—like how those vocalizations had similar purposes as a lot of human speech. So those two ideas were at play in my head but I didn't yet have the glue to necessarily connect them. But I started to think about how space and the ocean are these similar exploration fields—where we don't actually have very much knowledge of either and that helped the story coalesce. For me, ideas don't really get going though until I have the first and last images of the story. So I had to wait a little longer until I knew those two elements—the museum and in space where David is looking out the window. Those dual windows—us looking through glass into something we're trying to understand.

AB: A decade ago! I love tales about these stories that linger forever. That maybe take us longer than most to really figure out, but we never find ourselves able to forget about or really move on from. Is that normal at all for you, or is this something of an outlier? Can you tell me a little more about that process, especially with a story that can span so many years... and what it felt like when the two elements came together and you (maybe?) finally felt like you'd figured it out?