“How to Survive” was initially inspired by a quote from a Jenny Holzer art piece that my boyfriend cut out of a magazine years ago. It reads, “In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.” I have been unable to get that image/phrase out of my head ever since, and that is how the story started. In the spring when I wrote “How to Survive” there was a lot of hail, and storms unusual for the Bay Area area, as well as a number of moderately sized earthquakes. I wanted my character to suspect that these sorts of occurrences were perhaps signs of the world literally collapsing in some way (I sort of thought they might be myself), and for her own internal space to mirror that in a non-subtle fashion. I wanted the most greedily, beautifully self-indulgent truths right up against the most unarguable facts of nature, and for her to find a way through it all. Maybe.
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