Hot Air
by Marcy Dermansky
Interview by Ellen Birkett Morris
Marcy Dermansky’s Hot Air is an off kilter romp that explores the intersection of self-interest and loneliness, wealth and envy, and the permeable boundaries of modern life.
Told from the perspective of four main characters, the novel begins when a billionaire crashes his hot-air balloon into the middle of a post-pandemic first date upending the lives of all involved.
Joannie is on a date for the first time in seven years with neighbor Johnny, her daughter in tow, when her childhood crush Jonathan, a summer-camp fling turned famous billionaire, and his wife Julia, crash-land his hot-air balloon in Johnny’s swimming pool. Julia is tired of Jonathan, but desperately wants a child. No one else seems to know what they want. Then there is the enigmatic assistant Vivian. Thus begins a lost weekend of changing partners and hidden motives. Marcy Dermansky discusses the creation of her latest novel.
Tell me about your apprenticeship as a creative writer. Was there a specific piece of writing advice that has made a difference to you that you can share with us?
I have always known that I wanted to be a writer. I published my first novel at the age of 35, which isn’t old exactly, but I wish that I had started sooner. It took a long time for me to trust the idea of myself as a writer, to commit to it.
After college, I moved to San Francisco, which is where I thought that writers went – and that part was true – but I also had to work, in order to live. I had full time administrative jobs for five years and putting in that kind of time can muddle a dream. Quitting my job to go graduate school in writing was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and basically everyone asked me, including the UPS delivery man, why I left San Francisco. I do miss San Francisco, but I hear it’s not the same.
Regarding writing advice: it’s all over the place. What works for one person doesn’t work for someone else. It’s important to understand that. I might not even listen to me.
Mary Robison, my mentor in grad school, taught me how to edit my work, how to end scenes and stories faster, usually by lopping off my last sentence or paragraph. I have been doing that ever since. I am really grateful to her.
I also don’t believe in inspiration that we see in movies, like a light bulb going off in our heads. I think we have to sit in front of our computers, forces ourselves, and write and rewrite and the inspiration does come, while we are working.
James Dickey said the idea for Deliverance came to him as a vision of a man standing alone on top of a mountain. His job was to get the man off the mountain. How did the premise of Hot Air develop?
Hot Air literally came from a writing prompt. It’s sad to say it wasn’t my idea. But because I was in a bad writing place – no ideas – I used a prompt. A hot air balloon crashes down into a first date. It began as a short story.
The short story turned out well, I knew it, and I shared it with a friend and my agent who both suggested I keep going with it, make it into a novel. At first I didn’t want to, so I let it sit for a while before I went back to it. No other book of mine has started this way.
We live in a time when the gulf between the wealthy and the rest of us is huge and we see billionaires like Jonathan play out their dreams on the world stage. What were the challenges of writing such a character?
I didn’t quite realize when I wrote this book that I was tapping into something bigger. This billionaire age we are living in. It seemed necessary to me that I make Jonathan Foster rich, because only a rich person would take out a hot air balloon for an anniversary date. And then the idea grew. Honestly, in the writing, at times I had trouble making him rich enough.
Now, I am having trouble even in seeing the appeal this kind of insane wealth. That really isn’t my interest per se, but I am definitely interested in how that wealth applies to regular people’s lives, gazing in. I keenly feel how much I don’t have, while being keenly aware of how lucky I am compared to so many other people.
This sounds silly, but I often used to say that if I were to hold public office, I would build more public swimming pools. I believe it’s a good model and that there aren’t enough of them. When I went to graduate school in Mississippi, I was stunned to learn the town didn’t have a public pool. Basically you could only swim if you were rich enough to have a pool or belong to a country club. This was in the South, where it’s much hotter. When you start talking about swimming pools, it’s not just about me wanting to swim laps. It’s about class and race, too.
How did you use the financial inequities between Joanie and the Fosters to increase the drama?
Thanks for seeing that. The wealthy tend not to share their goodies. It’s almost worse for Joannie to get access to things that she can’t have. Everything good can be taken away.
I think that because Joannie isn’t rich, she starts at a disadvantage of having to feel gratitude, even for being served a free breakfast in the morning.
How long did it take you to write Hot Air?
Writing Hot Air was not a straight forward process. I wrote the short story first and then did not work on it for about a year. Then, I wrote the first draft in about three months.
And then, I did some editing with my agent.
And then, I did some more editing when working with my editor of Knopf. Some of the best writing, including the chapters with Vivian, came late in the process.
This is your sixth novel. Has writing them gotten any easier? How has the process changed along the way?
The writing hasn’t gotten easier for me. I still suffer from huge waves of doubt and sometimes believe, I will never publish another book. It’s a little bit crazy, I am answering these questions about three months after Hot Air was released and I am feeling that doubt right now. I also have to tell myself that it is irrational and get out of my own way.
The process, honestly, changes with almost every book. I wrote most of my novel Very Nice in cafes. I wrote most of Hot Air in a friend’s house, where we held regular writing dates. I am working on a new novel now, despite my doubts. For this book, I am working at home, in my office, a beautiful room with little things that I love and sometimes my sleeping cats.
What challenges and rewards did the multiple point of view structure offer you?
Multiple points of view are fun. I love when Joannie sees one thing one way and then we go into Johnnie’s head and the same experience is completely different. Like their first kiss. Or Johnnie and Julia’s experience in bed together.
I think multiple POVS open a book; it makes easier to move ahead faster. Every new chapter bounces off of the previous chapter. I love that.
What advice would you offer to apprentice writers on stand encouraged and/or honing their craft?
I do believe in reading, a lot. I think we learn so much about writing from taking in other writer’s great sentences, by marveling about how a book is made. I recently reread Emily St John’s Station Eleven. I do believe that book is genius. It not only has multiple point of views. It also jumps forward and backwards through time. The writing is also lyrical, focusing on lists. And her imagination about what would happen after a devasting pandemic is astounding.
And I lost the thread of this question.
I think it is important to actually love the process of writing. So often writers want to be done with their manuscripts, finished, sold, they want to have a book. I feel this way, too, honestly.
But whenever I do finish a book I also feel a loss, an absence. It’s so wonderful to be in the middle of a novel, to feel purposeful, to sit down and know exactly what you are working on. I would remind writers of the joy that we get creating work.
Discuss what you are working on now.
Thank you for asking. I try really careful NOT to be talk about what I am working on while I am working. It’s a form of protection, really. But, I am writing and so fingers crossed.
Marcy Dermansky is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Hurricane Girl, Very Nice, The Red Car, Bad Marie and Twins. Her short fiction has been widely published and anthologized, appearing in McSweeney’s, Guernica, The Indiana Review, Lenny Letter and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Smallmouth Press Andre Dubus Novella Award and Story Magazine Carson McCullers short story prize.
