What’s your work situation right now?
I’m a working writer and have been for a while. I started working the way I do now in 2020. I was working at this VICE vertical, Garage. It folded during the pandemic. I really hated that job a lot. I had to write two posts a week and they could kind of be about whatever I wanted, but I found it made me hate writing. When I got laid off I was like, “I’m never going to work in media again.”
Because you had to just come up with bullshit all the time?
Yeah. That’s a horrible way to work. But also around that time I started a really serious reading practice. I was reading a ton of novels, like 50 or 60 a year. Now I’m friends with all these novelists and they read, like, 100 books a year, but 60 is a lot for me… So I was reading a ton, and I was starting to write fiction. I decided I was not going to have another writing job again and that this was the only kind of writing I can tolerate. I impulsively applied to the Columbia MFA program and then got in, and since then have been doing whatever bullshit a person can do to be able to pay my rent, maintain a creative practice, and support my fiction habit. I’ve done every sort of shitty job, from Photoshopping vibrators onto white squares for SELF magazine, to ghostwriting women’s OnlyFans messages, to ghostwriting copy for a grey-market watch app. Most recently my jobs are that I teach at Columbia and I’m a fact-checker at Graydon Carter’s Air Mail.
Did you experience a learning curve when you shifted from writing for digital media to writing fiction?
Yeah, totally. I always wrote stories as a kid, from a really young age. As soon as I was able to write anything I was writing fiction. But then I completely stopped in college because I was like, “This is a hobby for a child and I’m going to become a serious writer.” When I switched gears to writing fiction again after I quit working in media, it felt so scary. But it also felt like the most intuitive kind of writing that I had ever done in my life. The potential energy that I thought I needed to do it felt impossible initially, but then once I was actually doing it, it felt easy, like it just makes sense to me. The stuff I was writing was bad, but I realized that I understand how to do things like form a narrative because I have been doing it my whole life.
Were you doing writing prompts? What was the ideation process like before you started writing your book?
The way I started writing fiction was I decided to write 200 words of fiction a day. I was seeing [my ex-boyfriend] at the time and he encouraged me, “You should really try writing fiction because you have all these opinions about novels.” He and his friend were sending each other 200 words of fiction a day, and I decided to do a version of that for myself. Once I realized I loved doing that, I was writing short stories pretty much immediately. I had the idea for this novel in the back of my head. I knew I wanted to write it, I just couldn’t figure it out for another several months. But within about six months of me starting to write fiction, I was working on the book.
You’ve rejected the label of autofiction for your novel. What were you comfortable leaning into and what were you pushing against in terms of mining your own life?
That’s a really hard question. The small story of my book is based on some real things that happened to me. But if I were to write the small story as the whole thing, I would find that deeply unsatisfying. That doesn’t feel like a book I would want to read. Like, okay, it’s a book about a girl in her early 20s who lives in a punk venue with her boyfriend and the relationship doesn’t work out. I was trying to find a version of that story that was packaged in a style I actually want to read. My taste was and is geared towards writers like Kafka or Donald Barthelme or Kathy Acker. How can I make my stupid story about being a young woman in New York more exciting?
There are all these opinions about MFAs and how they shape writers. In one piece, you were quoted comparing MFA peer feedback to the Goodreads comment section. But I feel like you had a positive experience in your program overall?
Definitely. I’m glad I did the MFA. I don’t recommend going to Columbia for a lot of people. It’s very expensive; I got a ton of [scholarship] money and I was still paying for a lot of it myself. But what I got out of it was being forced to work on my novel. When I started I think I had 40 pages of it written, and I basically just worked on it the whole time I was there. I also was in a really good community of writers who were as serious about it as I was and cared about books in the same way that I did. It was great to be reading each other’s writing and pushing each other to be better.
Do you like teaching? Has it taught you anything about your own practice?
I love teaching. I never thought I would do it until I got offered the opportunity to. I teach undergrad; a lot of them are teenagers, and are both not self-conscious at all and at the same time so self-conscious. All this stuff has made me a better editor of my own work because I’m thinking all the time about how to help other people with theirs… I love seeing how a lot of [my students] are goofy and funny and willing to go there.
I can see the consensus of your book being, “Oh she really goes there.” Did you have moments of thinking you needed to pull back? Did you ever think to yourself, “No, I am not allowed to include doodles in my novel.”
There was stuff I was pulling back on because I felt like I was culling from my own life too much and I want that to just be for me. But in terms of worrying if it’s too crazy, no. Later, when I was working on my book with an agent and editor, they were the ones who were saying that at times. I was like, “Actually there should be more of her getting anally fucked in a parking lot.”
How much does the thought of outside perception affect your work?
I try to think about it as little as possible. I have my life set up in a way so that when I’m writing fiction I just want it to feel fun, like it’s my weird little hobby. Even though now it’s my job, it’s my income. I definitely think about how my work is perceived at large, but I try to never think about it while I’m writing. My goal is for the act of writing to be as pleasurable as possible.
You’re already working on another novel, right?
Yeah.
How do you structure your writing time? Is it still some version of the 200 words a day?
I’m really not working on it much right now because I’m too stressed about everything with this book coming out. [laughs] I have a lot of [the next book] written. I mean, it’s a mess. All the times that I’ve gotten writing done I’m writing like 10,000 words a week or something insane. I won’t work on it for two months and then that will be the only thing I do for a bit… So much of writing novels is a logic problem. A lot of that is not happening on the page.
Back to the interspersed doodles in Paradise Logic—how did you come to include them?
I come from a background of making zines and that’s a big part of that book. And when I was feeling frustrated in the editing process for this book, I decided to just doodle until I figured out what I wanted to put there. Then I realized I could just literally have the doodle in the book.
What is your relationship to zines?
I still make them. I started making zines when I was 15 years old because I was a really big fan of Rookie Mag. I thought it was such a cool way to think about the intersection of writing and art and DIY culture, which was really appealing to me as a teenager. I was doing it with girls on Tumblr, like, “This is my fashion magazine.” Then as I got older, I saw zines as a special part of my writing practice that really, really feels like it’s just for me. I do it when I’m feeling hyper-graphic. I make them myself and lightly edit them myself and just post a link on social media, like, “Hey, you can Venmo me…”
Do you have anxiety around sharing your work and having it be publicly accessible online?
All that stuff really freaks me out. I try to not think about it, or to think about it in a way of, “Oh this is just like when I was posting on my blog that had 10 followers.” I try to be as humble and normal about it as possible, but it is weird to have people who don’t know you have opinions about you.
You’re publishing with Simon & Schuster, one of the biggest publishing houses in America. How did that element of the institution shape your process?
I have an amazing agent and an amazing editor, and everyone who worked on my book I really respect. Honestly, I decided to go that route [of a major publisher] because I’m extremely ambitious about my writing. I want it to be a big deal and I want it to reach a lot of people because I think I’m really good at it. It’s definitely weird and scary and I’m always nervous about it, but I don’t think I would have done it another way.
Dude, I love that. People are very scared to admit to their ambition. Have you always been this way?
I’ve always been extremely ambitious. When I had a fashion blog in high school I was like, “I’m gonna be so famous from this because I’m so good at writing.” And it was horrible, but I took it so seriously. I remember when I was in college, the Pitchfork critic Jessica Hopper was touring this essay collection that she wrote and she came and gave a talk. She was like, “No one is ever going to hold a door open for you as a woman. You have to do it for yourself.” However way you think about that, it’s basically true. So I was always going to be my own hype man, because I think that I do a good job.
What are some of the artistic references that shaped Paradise Logic or informed its protagonist, a girl named Reality?
She’s a classic girl who hangs out at DIY venues, which is what I was doing at that age. She’s cool; she’s listening to a lot of kraut rock and Todd Rundgren and Brian Eno. She’s listening to pick-me “DIY girlfriend” music, which is also stuff that I think is really good. I was listening to a lot of music when I was writing my book. Like, really shitty music. Like Eminem.
What era?
Early Eminem.
So you’re not someone who needs silence to write.
No, I actually need to be listening to music. I feel like that’s where all the weird stuff comes from… I sit at a desk and I listen to music uncomfortably loudly. I have to get into the zone. [laughs] I’m not that religious about how I write, I just know when it’s time to do it. When I was in grad school, people were always like, “No one sits down to write and feels like they’re taking dictation from god.” But I’m like, “I have to feel like I’m getting dictation from god.”
The book feels like that! Is that a voice that is going to carry over into future writing? Or do you think it’s specific to this project?
I think it’s been absorbed in my larger aesthetic, which has been carved out since writing a draft of my book.
How did you develop that aesthetic?
It happened naturally… I figured out how to write the voice of the book because I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day and Sheila Heti’s How Should A Person Be in the same week. I was like, it has to be someone who is a world-class love but who is also the best butler of all time.
Your book has some great writing about sex, something it feels like authors aren’t necessarily doing a lot of right now.
It’s so annoying. I’m just like, people think about sex all the time. I mean, I think about sex all the time. So why wouldn’t I write about the main thing I think about? People should write about whatever the main thing they think about is.
Do you have a specific audience in mind for your book?
It’s for everyone. I feel like I’m realistic about what my audience is, which I think is mostly going to be really famous girls, like celebrities. And early-twenties nympho sluts.
What’s the best thing you’ve read recently?
My boyfriend gave me this sex manual from the 1920s that I was obsessed with: Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l’usage des maisons d’éducation. It’s supposed to be a guide for good girls in school. It’s like, “Don’t put your pussy on the table when the teacher is instructing!” It’s kind of incredible that it exists. I read it in French which I was really proud of.
I’m always worried that I read too much contemporary fiction and stay in too narrow a lane. Do you push yourself to seek different things?
I actively avoid reading contemporary fiction. I love it and I do read it sometimes. I read the Tony Tulathimutte book [Rejection] over Christmas and it was amazing, so smart and funny. But there’s so much else to read right now and the stuff that feeds me the most, creatively, is not stuff written in the last ten years. I think everyone should diversify their reading, all the time. I read mostly 20th-century fiction, and then force myself to read stuff that’s a little bit older. I got really into Henry James last year. I read Portrait of a Lady. It’s incredibly impressive. It’s 700 pages long and has no plot. I read it when I was in France and it’s about a beautiful, smart woman who is living abroad and rejecting guys all the time.
I’m reading The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy right now.
Oh I love that book. It’s a beautiful, sexy book from the 1950s about an ingénue in Paris—love!
She’s so quirky, I love her. Wait, actually, how do you feel about that word, “quirky”? I feel like you’re going to get it in relation to your writing, if you haven’t already.
It’s pretty sexist, honestly. It’s fine that people are going to use it to describe my book… When I was querying my book, I had a really hard time finding an agent. When they were rejecting my book, people were like, “This is so quirky.” And it’s like, I don’t know, I think it’s saying some pretty serious things about art, death, relationships, and sex! But okay, fine! Pynchon was quirky but you’d never use that word. These words are applied to women’s writing more than men’s writing. But ultimately I don’t really care that much.
Sophie Kemp recommends:
Carmex
Silk dress socks
Guitar solo
Dolmens
Instant Messaging
This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Greta Rainbow.
Greta Rainbow | Radio Free (2025-03-26T07:00:00+00:00) Writer Sophie Kemp on being honest about your ambition. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/26/writer-sophie-kemp-on-being-honest-about-your-ambition/
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