“Werewolf Syndrome” was Râna’s first semi-professional publication; it originally appeared in Intrepidus Ink. For editorial services, Râna can be contacted through her website.
--interview by Marcia Peterson
WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Fall 2024 Flash Fiction competition. What prompted you to enter the contest?
Râna: In a general sense, I like WOW. I’ve been following the site for about a year, and I’m always impressed with the quality of the articles and stories that are published. So, I wanted to position myself among all these talented writers, and I took my shot by entering a previous WOW contest (in which I was thrilled to have been awarded an honorable mention). As far as this contest is concerned, honestly, it was a spontaneous, last-minute decision. I had high confidence in my story, so I figured I should take a chance on it. I was also encouraged by reading up on Quressa—I got a vibe about her that I liked and related to, and I wanted to share my story with her.
WOW: Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, “Werewolf Syndrome?”
Râna: Well, if the ideas behind the story are that (1) we live with warped notions of beauty (and, arguably, of wellness); and (2) we can resist these by embracing our authentic selves, then what foregrounded these ideas was probably the fact that, at the time of writing, I was suffering from extremely uncomfortable (and visually unattractive) flare-ups of my multiple chronic skin conditions. This put me at odds with myself—I felt like my own skin was eating me alive and making me look monstrous (just like my protagonist feels as though her body is waging war on her with her condition of rapid/excessive hair growth). In retrospect, I think that, subconsciously, that feeling gave way to a question about what it would be like to engage in radical self-acceptance—which would include accepting the discomfort, the ugliness, etc. In a more conscious and immediate way, I was writing to a prompt from my writers’ community, and the prompt engendered an interested in exploring the theme of transformation. I’ve commented on this in a prior interview.
WOW: What advice would you give to someone wanting to try writing flash fiction for the first time?
Râna: This is really important for a work of any length, but I feel it’s critical to the success of a flash piece: Know your story’s substance, and focus on weaving it into every developmental and stylistic aspect of the story. A longer story, like a novel, will have a number of themes and preoccupations, and will take many ins and outs, detours and sideroads, etc., in driving to the heart of its substance. But I would argue that flash fiction has to dive right into its substance and dwell in it the whole time. Is your story essentially about grief? Then let grief drip off every line and permeate every space. Is it about redemption? Then show us redemptive actions and engage with your characters’ redeeming qualities. Is it about love, hate, blame, forgiveness? Then be bold and thorough in using language that expresses, embodies, suggests, or reflects these things.
WOW: What are you reading right now, and why did you choose to read it?
Râna: I just finished reading Albert Camus’s The Plague, which I picked up out of a sense of intellectual responsibility—I’m a philosophy major with an interest in existentialism, yet I had only ever read one of Camus’s books before (and disliked it, at that). I’m around the same age now that Camus was when he won the Nobel Prize for literature, so I felt a kind of humble kinship with him and wanted to give a brother a chance!
I’ve also been leafing through various pieces in my mom’s book, Monkey Appetite, as a way of coping with grief and feeling close to her, having recently lost her to illness. I worked on this project with her, as her editor, so I feel really fortunate to have this tangible and deeply storied legacy to hold on to.
WOW: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Râna. Before you go, do you have a favorite writing tip or piece of advice you can share?
Râna: I’m going to share a quote from Kenneth Atchity’s book, A Writer’s Time, that I transcribed onto a piece of paper and have hanging above my desk for whenever I need that extra push: “Write from the heart about things that matter to us all, and let nothing deter you from writing what only you can write.”
WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Fall 2024 Flash Fiction competition. What prompted you to enter the contest?
Râna: In a general sense, I like WOW. I’ve been following the site for about a year, and I’m always impressed with the quality of the articles and stories that are published. So, I wanted to position myself among all these talented writers, and I took my shot by entering a previous WOW contest (in which I was thrilled to have been awarded an honorable mention). As far as this contest is concerned, honestly, it was a spontaneous, last-minute decision. I had high confidence in my story, so I figured I should take a chance on it. I was also encouraged by reading up on Quressa—I got a vibe about her that I liked and related to, and I wanted to share my story with her.
WOW: Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, “Werewolf Syndrome?”
Râna: Well, if the ideas behind the story are that (1) we live with warped notions of beauty (and, arguably, of wellness); and (2) we can resist these by embracing our authentic selves, then what foregrounded these ideas was probably the fact that, at the time of writing, I was suffering from extremely uncomfortable (and visually unattractive) flare-ups of my multiple chronic skin conditions. This put me at odds with myself—I felt like my own skin was eating me alive and making me look monstrous (just like my protagonist feels as though her body is waging war on her with her condition of rapid/excessive hair growth). In retrospect, I think that, subconsciously, that feeling gave way to a question about what it would be like to engage in radical self-acceptance—which would include accepting the discomfort, the ugliness, etc. In a more conscious and immediate way, I was writing to a prompt from my writers’ community, and the prompt engendered an interested in exploring the theme of transformation. I’ve commented on this in a prior interview.
WOW: What advice would you give to someone wanting to try writing flash fiction for the first time?
Râna: This is really important for a work of any length, but I feel it’s critical to the success of a flash piece: Know your story’s substance, and focus on weaving it into every developmental and stylistic aspect of the story. A longer story, like a novel, will have a number of themes and preoccupations, and will take many ins and outs, detours and sideroads, etc., in driving to the heart of its substance. But I would argue that flash fiction has to dive right into its substance and dwell in it the whole time. Is your story essentially about grief? Then let grief drip off every line and permeate every space. Is it about redemption? Then show us redemptive actions and engage with your characters’ redeeming qualities. Is it about love, hate, blame, forgiveness? Then be bold and thorough in using language that expresses, embodies, suggests, or reflects these things.
WOW: What are you reading right now, and why did you choose to read it?
Râna: I just finished reading Albert Camus’s The Plague, which I picked up out of a sense of intellectual responsibility—I’m a philosophy major with an interest in existentialism, yet I had only ever read one of Camus’s books before (and disliked it, at that). I’m around the same age now that Camus was when he won the Nobel Prize for literature, so I felt a kind of humble kinship with him and wanted to give a brother a chance!
I’ve also been leafing through various pieces in my mom’s book, Monkey Appetite, as a way of coping with grief and feeling close to her, having recently lost her to illness. I worked on this project with her, as her editor, so I feel really fortunate to have this tangible and deeply storied legacy to hold on to.
WOW: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Râna. Before you go, do you have a favorite writing tip or piece of advice you can share?
Râna: I’m going to share a quote from Kenneth Atchity’s book, A Writer’s Time, that I transcribed onto a piece of paper and have hanging above my desk for whenever I need that extra push: “Write from the heart about things that matter to us all, and let nothing deter you from writing what only you can write.”
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