A Short Interview w/ Jeff Chon

"Bonus material" for Chon's short story, “Nothing Personal,” published on Tuesday, 3/4.

If you haven’t already, reading Jeff’s amazing story, “Nothing Personal” now… and then read our short interview about the story!

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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?

Jeff Chon: It all started in a group text. The morning after the Luigi Mangione murder, friends joked I was going to be the person dumb enough to try and turn it into a story. That more or less planted the seed, as I thought about it on and off all day and then started laying down bricks when I got home from work. I find a lot of good writing has come from me after people laugh off an idea as bad; I'm sure I'm not alone in this. We've all been told things like "It's been done before," or "No one's going to read it," so we deal with this kind of negative talk and self-talk all the time. I think sometimes we write things to prove it's possible, even if we're only try to prove it to ourselves.

RIck Moody's "Mansion on the Hill" was on my mind as I was writing this, because I've always liked second person stories that address a specific person. It's not the first time I've encountered that technique, but it's the one I think of whenever it's used. I've tried it a few times, and this might be the first time I was happy with the result. More often that not, I end up cutting all those "you's" during revision. That Moody story is special to me because it was one I'd talked about with my mentor Wesley Gibson, who's passed on now, and he was also definitely on my mind, as he is quite frequently when I write. I don't know if that grief was channeled in any conscious way, but I do know that when I write I always want to add things that might make him laugh. He seemed to get my sense of humor when a lot of people did not.

All in all, I was lucky my friends knew who I was. Just being told it was a dumb idea made me want it more because I really believed I was the person who could do this "the right way." I don't really know what that means, to do it the right way. I guess sometimes, you just know you're the guy for the job, and you feel the electricity flowing into your fingertips while you type. I had a great time.

I love "friends joked I was going to be the person dumb enough to try and turn it into a story... I find a lot of good writing has come from me after people laugh off an idea as bad" as inspiration!

We're both pretty giant Dave Housley admirers, and he feels like a kind of king of this kind of story impetus. You say, "I'm sure I'm not alone in this," and maybe I'm wrong here, but I feel like this is actually less common than you/we might think. Either because they don't have the impulse, or they do and don't followthrough on it, but also maybe because these kinds of stories can be so hard to pull off!

I guess I wonder if this has always been your mentality when it comes to writing, or is it more a position you arrived at? And I'm curious, too, about how proactively you seek out or push yourself to follow through on these impulses, or if at this point it just happens?