Gina Nutt: This story finds two friends on a road trip, during which they discuss writing. It’s meta and fun. What do you find most energizing about a story within a story—or a story that opens into another story? 
Aaron Burch: I’m not totally sure what I find most energizing about it, but it is definitely one of my current modes. If I knew, I’d probably stop using it as a “move”!

I think it is a fun story construction… though can be tricky to pull off? When it doesn’t work, I know as a reader I can feel like, if the real story is the story-within-the-story, why do I care about the shell/container? That might be part of the challenge that makes it fun! Same as going meta, or writing so much about nostalgia — these can all be pitfalls into a story not working. There’s definitely a certain kind of joy in taking something that maybe isn’t supposed to “work,” and figure it out, like a puzzle.

That’s all an after-the-fact answer though. I’m not thinking about any of that in the moment. When I’m writing, I’m trying to have fun and entertain myself, and I have maybe 2-5 readers in mind who I’m hoping, when I send them the story, will think it’s fun and exciting, too. I’m glad to hear you describe it as fun!

GN: The momentum here clips along with the characters’ movements—imagined and real—as well as the narrator’s thoughts. How did you find the right balance of the narrative and the narrator’s ruminations on writing?
AB: I think mostly just instinct? I teach, and edit lit journals, and edited a craft anthology (that kinda isn’t really a craft anthology), and so I think a lot about writing and editing and craft, but I think my biggest belief about craft is that you read a lot, and closely, and think about writing deeply and with curiosity, and you write a lot, and a lot more… and all of that is like hours of practice in the gym or whatever, and then when you are writing, it is more like playing a game, and when it is going well, you aren’t thinking about any of that at all and just working on instinct (but an instinct that has been worked like a muscle).

Which is kinda all to say: I found the right balance by what felt right?

Slightly more specifically, I wrote the story last summer, and was pretty happy with it. Sent it out a tiny but, but mostly forgot about it and worked on other stuff and just went about life. And then, I really wanted to send something to you, because I think Terrazzo has been publishing cool stuff and I wanted to be a part of it, but I haven’t been writing much lately. I remembered this story and revisited it and… I mostly still liked it but it was also kinda clunky. In ways that I couldn’t see a year ago, more closely to when I’d written it. So I got in there and added some stuff and cut some stuff, and I don’t know that I was thinking about finding the “right balance of the narrative and the narrator’s ruminations on writing” but I was just trying to get it to sound and feel better, and now that you say it, a lot of that was probably centered on tweaking and adjusting those levels until rereading it just made me feel less annoyed at my previous self for not having gotten it right.

GN: I’m curious about the themes of friendship and nostalgia that flavor this story. The narrator and Pilot have been pals for long enough to reminisce about the Blue Album together. What drew you to these characters? 
AB: Friendship and nostalgia are probably just my two most common themes across all my writing.

Last year, I drove across the country with one of my best friends. We were driving from where I live now (Michigan) to where I grew up and he still lives (Tacoma). And so, right there, knowing my own themes, at least a part of my brain was probably going, man, this is all going to be ripe for writing about!

On that drive, we stopped in Denver, went to a Rockies game. And, as teenagers, we did bond over the Blue Album! So the “bones” of this story are pretty nonfiction. Which is pretty true for most of my stories — they start with something from my life (a person, a memory, a place, a scenario, a joke, whatever), and then from there I’m turning characters into amalgamations, and I’m making shit up, and putting together characters who are based on people who have never actually met, and putting together events nowhere near or related to each other, and all of that is then leading to more shit getting made up, etc. etc.

It's funny, I have an essay about us driving into Ogden, Utah the day after Denver. And so that and this short story are rooted in the same 24 hours, maybe 36. In the essay, I’m really investigating what it means to be on this road trip with a best friend. In the story, I’m trying to have as much fun as possible and tell a good story?

I also just published another short story that does so in different ways but similarly plays in this meta terrain, and there’s a moment where I write:

Pilot is the name I sometimes use for a best friend character in my stories. The Pilot character is usually a fictionalized version of one of my friends, though not any one of them specifically. It rotates. Sometimes it’s an amalgamation. It’s never my friend who is a pilot, though. That would feel too on the nose.  

And that’s… mostly true! Although the guy I was on this road trip with is my buddy who is a pilot, and so “Pilot” here, is based on my friend who is a pilot. That doesn’t matter, at all — not narratively, and not to any reader. But it feels like a kinda funny inside joke to myself. Which, again, circles back to this idea of having fun while writing.

Final note (I know I’m already going so long on these answers!): this friend and I bonded over the Blue Album, and then also over the Red Album. Specifically “Heart Songs.” I LOVE this verse near the end: 

Back in 1991
I wasn't havin' any fun
Till my roommate said
“Come on and put
A brand new record on”
Had a baby on it
He was naked on it
Then I heard the chords
That broke the chains
I had upon me
Got together with my bros
In some rehearsal studios
Then we played
Our first rock show
And watched the fan base
Start to grow
Signed the deal that gave
The dough to make
A record of our own
The song come
On the radio
Now people go
This is the song

I love it because it is self-referential (in ways that I think are really fun, and that are not unrelated to this story) and also because it is about Nevermind being so important to Rivers and it was so important to me, too (AND my buddy), and I just love it as origin story and that he sings he “Got together with my bros” which kinda reminds of bonding with my “bros” (including said road trip buddy).

The first draft of the story ended by trying to bring all this in… but it just didn’t work. I think I was trying too hard to play with this snake-eating-its-tail meta stuff and trying to force it and it was just clunky. Letting myself let go of that is one of the big things that helped me figure out the balance for the story as a whole.

GN: Will you tell us your go-to karaoke song? Why is that the one?
AB: Funnily enough, it’s a Weezer song from Blue Album! “Say It Aint So.” It’s that one because I love that song, but really because I love getting to yell that “Dear daddy / I write you / in spite of years of silence” breakdown. When I do karaoke, I really want to get to yell and I want it to feel kinda communal with people getting into it and joining in and singing along. Which, in a way, circles back to the “fun” we were talking about in the beginning.

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
AB: One thing I love about being a writer is I think ALL this stuff energizes my writing. I guess I don’t really care about fashion — my gf kinda makes fun of me for being such a typical dude who just wears jeans and a band t-shirt every day, and DT recently told me I dress like his dad… but I guess even those could be said to describe versions of what I’m often trying to capture on the page? I love live music — death metal or hardcore, in a small venue, especially — and I often come away from a show energized and inspired. I’m often chasing trying to capture that on the page.

Early in the pandemic, during quarantine, I started painting with my girlfriend. I do it less now than I did in those first couple of years, but one of the outcomes was actually starting to think about myself as an “artist.” I’ve been writing and editing journals for 20+ years, but something about the visual art made me kinda recalibrate my own self-perception, and then apply it to my writing, and myself in general. I think it helped me realize how much I see the world as an artist. And seeing the world through the lens of art, means it all ends up inspiring me, energizing my writing. 

Maybe most specifically, and most directly related to this story, I love music. And I’m thinking here how much I love this Veruca Salt song, “Volcano Girls,” and specifically the lyrics, “I told you 'bout the seether before / You know, the one that's neither or nor / Well, here's another clue if you please / The seether's Louise.” I love the way — like Weezer’s “Heart Songs,” and life THIS STORY — it’s self-referential, “explaining” their previous hit song, “Seether.” That, and it is also playing with and riffing on  The Beatles’ “I told you about the walrus and me, man / You know we're as close as can be, man / Well here's another clue for you all / The walrus was Paul.”

There’s something about all that that feels, to me, so playful and fun. It lights me up. I don’t know or remember if I had any of that specifically in mind while writing, but it’s all definitely somewhere in my brain, rattling around, energizing and inspiring me, and one part of what I’m chasing while writing.