Gina Nutt: This excerpt from your novel, Dark Water, submerges us alongside a narrator on an underwater expedition. It’s dreamy, fascinating, and wildly curious. Can you tell us a bit about the book?
Mikaela Ryan: In 2023, I graduated with my MFA in creative nonfiction, and never thought I'd write a novel this soon (although, technically this is my second novel if you count the book I wrote for NaNoWriMo when I was 10, which is best kept in the drawer). The imagination and worldbuilding required seemed inaccessible to me. But I've applied the tools of nonfiction—research, structure—and have found fiction freeing. It's important to preserve the feeling of being an amateur. That gave me permission, because I'm not supposed to know how to write a novel. One of my friends calls this "mind games." They work.

The idea for Dark Water, which is a speculative historical novel in vignettes, originated on a walk around my neighborhood. I was at a park, reading a plaque, and one of the people mentioned was vaguely familiar and interesting. I snapped a photo and finished my walk. Eventually, I wrote the first vignette from that character's voice. I kept going. The novel draws from archival research, biographies, and letters. In one library basement, I had to wear white gloves to sort through newspaper clippings and photos, like a surgeon.

GN: The lyrical prose brings a poetic sensibility to this work, while the structure streamlines towards clarity. What are you considering when you weave syntax, language, and structure? Where do you find yourself pushing toward lyricism? When do you find yourself pulling back?
MR: Several vignettes in the novel are set in a dreamlike, surreal state, which lends itself well to poetic language and unconventional syntax. I want to induce a haze in certain moments. I have a tense relationship to lyricism, because I love language with crunch (for example, Lorrie Moore, whose acrobatic language inspires me), but I don't want to lean too fanciful or abstract. I've learned a lot about the value of writing plainly and concretely, weening my reliance on style. Grad school taught me to toy with these two modes and to accept that I like a little zhuzh, but to be sparing. Decisions to push or pull are largely intuitive, based on George Saunders' revision method of consulting an inner dial that either tilts positive or negative, and adjusting accordingly. It sounds scientific but it's not.

GN: The setting lends itself to mystery and reflection, while also nodding to friction the narrator faces, within herself and in relationship to others. How are you thinking about environment and tension as you work on this book? How does the ocean open the imagination of this work? What limits are you encountering?
MR: The main character is obsessed with bodies of water: wells, pools, lakes, oceans. An entire world exists beneath the surface, which is a metaphor for her interiority. When I was a kid, I knew a busy and high-powered woman whose escape was swimming laps in the ocean in the wee hours of the morning. It was her only silent place. That image has haunted me. In this vignette, the ocean represents respite but also danger. I like the juxtaposition.

The most daunting limit for me, as basic as it sounds, is sitting down every morning and wondering what to write. Two reliable jolts when I'm stuck are ekphrasis and personifying inanimate objects. Often these two techniques marry. I'll find a photo of an object and write in the object's voice. This was inspired by Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith, a collection of poems written in the voice of Hurricane Katrina—it's creepy and brilliant and also very oceanic. The visual can unlock verbal when you don't have words, which is almost always for me.

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
MR: I love this question and will steal it. A visit to the graveside of my main character, where I left a bouquet of lavender roses and unsuccessfully tried to commune with her ghost (she was silent). Things that echo or are quilted. Textile and embroidery artists from the Arts and Crafts movement, like Irish symbolist Phoebe Anna Traquair. Hearst Castle. My fridge magnet collection. Illuminated manuscripts. Jacaranda trees. Beyoncé's version of “Caro Mio Ben.” Art deco facades. Mood boards, made on the Cosmos app. Clarice Lispector, always. The religious irreverence of Ethel Cain, Mary Szybist, and Patricia Lockwood. The film La Chimera, directed by Alice Rohrwacher—each frame contains a world. Puppetry and miming. Tuna crudo if it's on the menu. The UCLA photo archive. Writing by hand. Los Angeles. So many of these were recommended by friends and other creatives: thank you.