EXIT INTERVIEW #2
Mila and Amanda, Part 1
The following is the second EXIT INTERVIEW to appear in Mommy’s El Camino. My intent with seeking out and publishing “exit interviews” came from thinking of some of my own past relationships—particularly the ones where I think to myself, What happened there? I’m genuinely curious about relationships other than the ones I’m in/have been in, as well as how any two people interpret how their relationship transformed or ended.
This EXIT INTERVIEW is quite different in content and tone than the first one. My thanks to Mila and Amanda for making this a pleasurable and fascinating read.
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Speaking of trauma: the “ex interview!” As a concept! The archetype of the ex has an automatic fraught connotation, but with us, it’s just a shifted relationship. —Mila
Mila Jaroniec is the author of Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover and the creator and editor of Black Lipstick. Her work has appeared in Playgirl, Playboy, Joyland, Ninth Letter, PANK, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Southwest Review, The Millions, NYLON and Teen Vogue, among others. She earned her MFA from The New School and teaches writing at GrubStreet and Writing Co-Lab. Find her on Instagram @milajaroniec.
Amanda Miska is the former Publisher of Split Lip Press and Magazine. Her work can be found at Catapult, The Rumpus, Wigleaf, Hobart, Midnight Breakfast, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction piece, “Nuptial Flight,” published in Gargoyle, was listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2020. She raises two daughters, sells vintage clothes, teaches yoga, studies somatic therapy, and some days works on her novel, in the Philly suburbs. You can find her on Instagram @mandamiska.
Mila Jaroniec: Tell me how we met!
Amanda Miska: We met online, I believe, because I was curating fiction for Luna Luna Magazine (RIP). It was my first pseudo-editing gig outside of being a reader for another literary magazine. The mag isn’t archived and I published some kick-ass authors that also went on to do cool things, but I can’t remember if I published something of yours then or if you were also doing something for the magazine? We didn’t meet in person until your book launch, but in between then, many intense emails and phone calls were had.
MJ: You did publish something of mine! A short story called “Desperate Strangers.” It was my first piece of fiction that I ever submitted anywhere, outside of some flash pieces. I don’t even know what compelled me to submit to Luna Luna—I wasn’t actively submitting anywhere else. I think it was because I was just toiling away on the novel and wanted a little publication dopamine boost? I liked the magazine and thought, Why not. So I adapted a section of my book into a little story, and the universe stepped in after that. But I actually totally forgot that this happened—I thought our first contact was Split Lip!
AM: And I think I totally didn’t make the connection that it was a portion from the novel, even as I read the novel after?! So the Universe was absolutely conspiring for us to work together. Even if our trauma-addled brains were not?
MJ: 100%. You always have to adjust for trauma-addled brains!
Speaking of trauma: the “ex interview!” As a concept! The archetype of the ex has an automatic fraught connotation, but with us, it’s just a shifted relationship. You’re my ex-publisher. Or ex-editor, since Split Lip Press still exists. How has going from editor to friend changed our relationship, in your eyes?
AM: I think I saw my role as a publisher/editor differently than some—definitely more like a midwife or doula situation, not God or Boss, so it didn’t feel as hierarchical? I just wanted to put the best possible book out there, and being a writer myself with dreams of one day publishing, I wanted the experience to feel good as much as the euphoria of the final tangible product. I think what I’m saying is, it was a natural transition, and an easy one, because I loved and respected you as a person and an artist, and our paths and lives were shifting directions, which is normal. It was a relief, in some ways, because I love being a friend and fellow writer in the trenches more than I ever loved being a publisher/editor.
MJ: That makes sense to me. I think you ruined me for editors though, now I expect all of them to be my best friends!
AM: I know that would be rare, but I remember going to a great panel at The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, with authors and either their agent or their editor, and the editor relationship was definitely more important to have a friendship because there has to be such mutual understanding and trust, whereas the agent relationship is better without that. So I don’t think the instinct is totally wrong. I know I have worked with editors I didn’t particularly like as people or online personas, and it was much harder for me to value their feedback. Like everything, then…the answer is somewhere in between.
MJ: I disagree on the point that the agent relationship is better without friendship, but I’m just speaking from my own experience! I feel that not only does the agent need to love your work, they need to believe in it enough to put all this muscle into shepherding it out into the world. That’s a lot of risk and gamble. And trust. I know some writers who would probably thrive in a hands-off agent relationship, but for me, a close agent relationship is so important. On par with a life partner, even!
For Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover, I queried a handful of agents, and it soon became clear that my project was not something they felt they could sell. Which was okay, because then I got to find out what it was like to be my own advocate. So it was me, agentless, looking for the right editor. And I got you!
You effectively launched my career. You saw something in me that no one else did at the time, and the publication of PVBS opened so many doors. It wasn’t the hot NYT-reviewed debut of the season, nowhere close, but it parted the sea for me. I have a fantastic agent now. My second book is on its way through the birth canal. I can support myself through writing. My classes sell out. This novel pulled my husband, for god’s sake. Seriously! He read it and fell in love and moved here from California, which is its own wild story. I have that mental thing where I always think I’m not good enough, but the data says different and I’m living my dream. You set all that in motion, as I know you did for many other writers.
So I have to ask: do you ever miss the lit scene?
AM: Oh man, seeing you put it that way made me feel a little emotional. I don’t miss “the scene,” exactly. I miss community with writers I really loved and admired who supported and encouraged me and vice versa. And I found small magazine and press publishing to be too stressful and overwhelming. I’m only able to write now with a lot of time away from that space. I miss Twitter before it went to shit (which was even a few years before it became X). I miss people inviting me to submit my work. I miss having deadlines (sometimes).
MJ: Well I have great news—I have my own lit mag now. You are invited to submit and you will definitely get a deadline! And money! Consider this a solicitation.
AM: I have had this plan on my radar since you launched, my babe, just waiting for the right inspiration to come. I have been in more of a longform fiction-writing mode recently, and I feel like when I’m not writing shorter pieces on a more regular basis, pitches for ideas also don’t really come to me? But someday soon, I really hope.
MJ: I’ll be here! But re: the public writing space, I miss Twitter too, if we’re being honest. It was addictive and toxic, sure, but it also brought so much good with it—professional and creative opportunities, a community that’s just harder to replicate digitally now. I don’t have X, I tried BlueSky but deleted it after like two weeks, it felt too sad. Like your dead pet, taxidermied. I have an Instagram account on life support but it doesn’t feel the same. It’s a marketing machine now, and I’m not good at it. I feel like I need to be good at it, but I’m not good at it.
AM: I only use Instagram, and it’s the same for me! And it’s always changing, and so dependent on videos now, which take so much time and energy to create. I miss just seeing snapshots of people and their lives. I don’t want everything to be moving and loud all the time. The world is already that way, and it was nice to have a space to just scroll peacefully? Even though I still did and do it way too much. It overwhelms me.
MJ: Yeah, no, that’s where I draw the line. I’m not a performer. It’s not my thing. Some people are good at it and enjoy it, and that’s great. A flat lay with a cute caption is the absolute best I can do.
But also, you know, there are highly hyped books that in reality are absolutely lackluster. Right? Things look one way online and are another way in real life, we know that from trying to buy clothes. You and I communicated online for months before we met in person. Was I different than you expected, or true to my digital persona?
But also, you know, there are highly hyped books that in reality are absolutely lackluster. Right? Things look one way online and are another way in real life, we know that from trying to buy clothes. —Mila
AM: A little different–though not in first impressions. You were always very clear about what you wanted, but you have this more soft spoken, gentle way about you. I knew some aspects of the novel we worked on together were autobiographical, and it took me a little while to connect the more generous, maternal, sweet Mila to the absolute fucking powerhouse Art Monster Mila.
MJ: “The absolute fucking powerhouse Art Monster Mila.” I feel like I need to print that out and stick it above my desk somewhere.
AM: Please do. If it wasn’t too egoistic (and apparently some tattoo artists won’t even do it?), I would tell you to tattoo it on yourself!
The night we met, I gave you an angel necklace and you gave me a tube of YSL lipstick engraved with the words ART MONSTER, a nod to a portion of Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation (later explored in this Rebecca Solnit essay). I feel like this somehow sums up our relationship and who we are as individuals? But you have remained the Art Monster, and I have spent a lot of time trying to heal my inner demons instead of just fictionalizing them on a page. There is a part of me that still aspires to Art Monstership. Probably has to do with my Aquarius Sun/Scorpio moon combo. Also seems important to share that we are both Aquarians, and even though that tends to make for very individualist people, I think it was also something that bonded us, in our alien-ness.
MJ: It absolutely has! I’ve never ever connected with another Aquarius to the level that you and I are connected. The other Aqua suns I know are weird loner basement types! My moon is in Aries, so where you have the Scorpio metadark quality, I have the Aries wildfire. Moon connections are deep, like subterranean springs. Remind me your rising? Mine is Virgo. That might be the part responsible for being clear about what I want!
AM: I am a Libra rising, which is why I have absolutely no clarity most of the time about what I want, because my people-pleasing nature (I think I have something like 5 planets in Libra?!) is strong. (Also a symptom of childhood trauma, so it’s a constant battle). And I have no Earth energy in my chart. I am all thoughts and feelings, one tiny spark of fire somewhere. I feel clear about what I want, but I don’t always feel like I have enough agency to ask for it.
MJ: Okay that makes sense. Groundedness and embodiment are underrepresented in your chart, so you have to work extra at that. I have four Capricorn placements in the 5th house, and I have a Jupiter in Taurus, plus that Virgo rising, so it’s like…everything comes with roots, but it doesn’t take much for me to feel stuck. Sometimes I feel tethered to reality in an uncomfortable way.
Your Art Monster is still in there—I think you made a very conscious decision to move in a different direction with your creative energy right now, but that doesn’t negate her existence! I can see you really going HAM once your girls are in college.
AM: Speaking of FEELINGS, this made me tear up too! I absolutely will never let my creative energy stagnate, and I always have to remind myself it’s an energy that I direct and redirect all the time, even if it’s just what I choose to wear to meet a friend for coffee. And I have been a late bloomer in so many ways, so I think late-blooming in terms of my writing has always been in the cards, and I am finally mostly okay about it, working at a slower pace, learning internal validation.
I absolutely will never let my creative energy stagnate, and I always have to remind myself it’s an energy that I direct and redirect all the time, even if it’s just what I choose to wear to meet a friend for coffee.—Amanda
MJ: Have you read Weird Girls by Caroline Hagood? I feel like it was written for us.
AM: I have not, but on my Notes app book list it goes. To the TOP!
MJ: So we talked about what you miss and where you might go next. But what do you not miss at all about being in the lit world?
*TO BE CONTINUED NEXT THURSDAY*