Author Chloe Caldwell

I sent Chloe an email a few weeks ago expressing admiration for her work and what came from that was this.  In her writing, she explores levels of the struggle to connect, the common human issue, but does so in a way that makes tense young men and difficult young women smile knowingly at the same time.  

She writes about sex, drugs, babysitting, fame, all wrapped in insecurity…she’s talking about being young and finding yourself in the wilderness, realizing your own lack of boundaries, your own need for something you can only half-name.  

Chloe has been published in a number of publications, especially in The Rumpus, where you’ll find her beautiful essay on where she writes.  It’s where I discovered her. 

She’s one of those strong struggling women who’s in the middle of that seductive decade of life, and putting it on paper.  

First I'd like to get some information on your book.  How much had you written when Kevin asked to see it?  When did you start writing it?  Was it originally conceived as a full book?

In October of 2010, my friend and I made a deal to write 200 pages during the month and mail them to each other and we stuck to that. I wrote a lot of it from scratch but I threw in a few of my older pieces. That sort of got me going. I read an interview with Dave Eggers and he said to print your stuff out and staple it together and hold it in your hands because it gives you motivation. So I was doing that—spending my evenings at the library printing out my pages, messing around with titles and the order, for fun. 

When Kevin asked to see it, six months later, I’d already taken out the weaker pieces and written others. It was 100 pages. It was sort of just sitting on my computer, and I knew that for what it was—it was done.  I knew that these essays belonged together, which makes sense because I wrote them during a certain chunk of my life. It had a firm disposition to it—a definite thread. So, I wasn’t sure what to do. I sent it to Short Flight/Long Drive, because I saw they were looking for a creative non-fiction book to put out this year. They rejected it. I also sent it to Patasola Press and never heard back. I thought about letting it sit for a year.  

I can’t really say the book is “about” anything because the pieces weren’t meant to make a book. I didn’t write them thinking, “I’m going to write a book of personal essays.” Once I lined them up together though, and thought about the order, I saw how they streamed into one another lucidly and logically. So, the connective thread is my voice, really. It’s about the different forms intimacy can be found or searched for in. It’s about truth. Loving. Hurting. 

I wrote the oldest piece in October 2009. I wrote the most recent pieces this past winter.  I wrote the bulk of it in Seattle in 2009 and 2010.  

When I first got in touch with you through email, you said, "writing to [you], asking questions and being earnest and kind is the first step to take in this field."  Who are some writers you've written to/who are some writers you love? 

If I read something and it breaks me apart and mends me together, and I cry, I write to the writer. The first time this happened was with Catherine Texier’s book, Break Up, which I read in 2009. If that book doesn’t murder you, I don’t know what will. My mind was blown. I couldn’t find her email address anywhere, but it was so important to me that I emailed her ex-husband (who the book is about!) and he gave me her address and told me that they have a daughter named Chloe together. I corresponded with Catherine a bit and she said she was moved that I wrote her and that her book affected me so much. She even read one of my essays, gave me some feedback, and told me that she understood why her book resonated so deeply within me. 

I’ve written to Stephen Elliott a few times because I quote him sometimes in things I write. He’s awesome. I’ll send him a passage like, “I just realized I quote you here and here. Is that okay?” And he just gets back to me and says thank you. I think he’s very smart and poignant and direct and I admire a lot of what he does. 

The second woman that had a huge affect on me is Cheryl Strayed. I wrote to her after reading “The Love Of My Life” inThe Sun Magazine and after we corresponded a bit, we discovered that my mother had also written to her—in 2002 about the exact same essay. 

I get it from my mother. Before the days of email she handwrote letters to authors, if their writing had moved her. In the early nineties, she hand wrote a letter to Brian Morton, author of The Dylanist, and he replied with a sweet handwritten letter of his own. She often received replies. I think writing to authors is a wonderful small act of kindness. I don’t know a writer that wouldn’t want to know if their writing affected someone. Most of the writers she wrote to, including Cheryl Strayed, wrote for The Sun Magazine. That magazine was lying around my house all of my adolescent years and come to think of it—I think it had a huge influence on me. Even back then, I preferred the memoir content more than the fiction. I used to stay home from school to smoke pot and read it. 

In The Chronology Of Water, when Lidia Yuknavitch is describing her time at the New York Writer’s Exchange, she says this: “These [four] women wrote unconventionally. Intentionally unconventionally. Wildly, passionately, blood-bodied, unapologetically blowing up the house of language from the inside out unconventionally. They were not mainstream writers. They were carving out astonishing paths of their own quite to the side of mainstream, quite in spite of the stupid mainstream, maybe the way the water cut the Grand Canyon. I wanted my writing to go like theirs. Follow it. I felt like their writing had parted the seas for people like me.”

The entire chapter in which Lidia goes to New York really hit me personally. I wept through it, as I did through much of the book. That is how I feel—about Lidia Yuknavitch, about Cheryl Strayed, about Catherine Texier. Inspire is a pale word for what they do to me. And they write about the subjects I love: self-destruction, love, sex, death, drugs, mothers, fathers, children, grief, and dysfunctional relationships. They write what’s in their hearts. They turn pain into something so tender and gorgeous that you can’t look away. That’s what I want to do. These three women provide a comfort inside the darkness of my writing head. I’ve not written to Lidia yet because I haven’t been able to find the words after reading hers.  

Other writers I love but have not written to: Poe Ballantine, Louis E. Bourgeois, Simon Van Booy, Jonathan Ames, Victor Lodato, Roland Barthes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Raymond Carver, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, John Fante, Joan Didion, Julie Orringer, Anne Lamott, Cynthia Kaplan, Krista Bremer, Sparrow, Sophie Calle. (I sort of wrote Sophie Calle—I went to an art show of hers in New York and wrote her a long letter in the guest book.)

You moved in with your brother at 20 and he encouraged you to write everyday.  What was your life like before you started writing seriously?  What was "the plan" when you moved in with him?

I already was writing every day but didn’t realize I wanted to be a writer. In middle school and high school I wrote lengthy analytical and obsessed journal entries. I wrote them almost every night, even if I were drunk or tired on a drug. Not because I was dedicated or put pressure on myself, but because I liked to. It gave me pleasure. It’s for exactly the same reason that I write now. 

The anecdote in “Where I Write” about my brother is more about the fact that he put it in plain view for me. When I said, “Sometimes I think I want to be a writer,” it was more of a joke, flirting with the idea. When he said, “You definitely do; you talk about it a lot,” it really clicked for me. It was right in front of my face. 

I moved in with him on a two-week whim with no money. I didn’t have a plan. That’s how I make most of my moves. I got a job within a week a few blocks from my apartment at a café. Before I moved to Brooklyn, I was living in upstate New York, half the time with my mother and half the time with my boyfriend. I was going to Hudson Valley Community College for human services. I played with the idea of being a substance abuse counselor. Then I got into a bad car accident and stopped going to school all that much. I was kind of lost. In New York, I sort of found myself, and met the kinds of people I hadn’t known I was craving in my life.  

Is there something special about being a young person who writes?  Do you think young writers have something in life that non-writers don't?  

I think it’s difficult. I forfeit going out like crazy these days. It’s pretty isolating. I think it’s hard to be young and know exactly what you want to do. Sometimes I want to go on unhealthy writing binges. That’s hard to do when also trying to have good relationships with your friends. And as a non-fiction writer it’s especially difficult, because you’re basically sitting alone in your bedroom writing and dwelling on the past, and it can be painful. It’s very hard for me to work for five consecutive hours and then push my desk chair in and face the world. I do it, but my head is usually in another place. As for having something special in life—I don’t know. I guess so. I think it’s special to have a strong passion because being in your twenties is rough anyway—and this kind of gives me some stability, some focus, a different perspective on life. I know it bothers some people in their twenties when they don’t have or have not found their passion yet, so that part makes me feel lucky, I suppose. 

What do you think about modern pop music?

Not much of my energy goes towards thinking about that. I don’t listen to it on my own. It doesn’t excite me or move me. I don’t like most of it but it doesn’t enrage me or anything. When I get into the car, I listen to CDs 99% of the time. I’ll listen to modern pop if I’m in a really dark mood, trying to make it light, or if I’m in a really light mood.

When I’m writing I use Grooveshark for music, often listening to the same two or three songs for days. Lately that song is “Last Night At The Jetty” by Panda Bear. Though, once it was “Love Song” by Natasha Bedingfield. In middle school I was a huge modern pop fan so maybe I got burnt out. I still know all the words to modern pop because I am one of those people that hears a song once and remembers the words forever. I really love grocery stores and banks for this reason. 

Why does writing about your sexuality interest you?  Has anyone told you that "you write like a man" because of the way you handle your subject matter?

It interests me because I’m a twenty-five year old female concerned with figuring myself out. Writing helps that. Sex helps that. Writing about sex absolutely helps that. Everything about sexuality interests me. I like writing about sex because I like sex. I like writing about love because I like love. I like writing about writing, kids, music, books, obsessions, because I like them. I think this is the stuff that makes us up as humans. It’s as simple as that for me. 

As for the second part of your question: I talked about exactly that with a male friend and he said this to me:  I think you do look at sex sometimes in a very physical and 'guy' way. But you are unmistakably woman in how cerebral your true turn-ons are. 

I think that pretty much nails it—I think I’m the same way in my writing—it can be very blunt, maybe flinchingly so, but I think my stories convey that sex is a very precious, tender thing to me. I am usually using sex in my stories to convey something deeper, usually a closeness I had with a person.    

It’s not a style; it’s more so that I am not flowery. I’m no poet. If I fucked someone or got fucked, then that’s how I describe it. Besides saying fucked, made love, slept together, or had sex, I don’t know how else to put it. I talk about sex the same way when I’m not on paper. I didn’t grow up with any qualms about sex or masturbation. I didn’t grow up with words other than sex, fuck, shit, poop, so those are the words I use. You know?  I’m not trying to shock or be crude or make anyone uncomfortable. I’m just being honest in the way that I know how. 

What have you usually gotten in trouble for in your life?  (What about you as a person usually gets you in trouble?)

Irreverence and impulsiveness, most definitely. 

You want examples? I don’t really have many. I’ve never gotten into trouble for anything too serious. High school was my most troublemaking time. I was an atrocious high schooler. I showed up stoned and late—I walked out early. I failed math and science like you wouldn’t believe. I did below the bare minimum in the other subjects. Lots of speeding tickets. In Brooklyn I’ve gotten kicked out of bars for dancing, gotten tickets for drinking on the street, selling clothes on the street.

Nothing serious. I’m just the kind of person—like if we’re sitting in the car at a gas station and my friend says, “let’s go to Canada!” I’ll actually go. That day. Without packing. Even though I have only twenty bucks. Even though I have to work the next day. That kind of thing. Though, I seem to be finally growing away from that. I also don’t have much a filter—I say things sometimes that maybe I shouldn’t say. I’m very emotional. These things might make some people uncomfortable, but it’s never been particularly troublesome.

Reach Michael Juliani here.