It is an election year in America, and the population is prickly with partisan barbs and heated declarative allegiancesakin to an Auburn-Alabama football game. Admist the noise, Stoyan Vassilev’s Hope Seven, winner of the 2012 Fourteen Hills’ Michael Rubin Book Award, quietly prepares for its printing. While the immigration debate focuses on our neighbor to the south, Vassilev’s compact, elegant collection of stories harkens back to life in a fictional neighborhood set in Sofia, Bulgaria. There, as the Iron Curtain closes, people express their dreams of immigrating to America.

 

Vassilev is reserved, as economical with the spoken word as he is in his writing. He lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, south of the City, with his wife and baby. With a young family, a software engineering job in Silicon Valley, and attending San Francisco State University’s MFA program at night, Stoyan’s time is precious. Luckily, we were able to squeeze in an interview, to explore his motivations and writing process in the wake of his schedule.

 

Fourteen Hills: Why did you make the subject matter in Hope Seven the focus of your first book of shorts?

 

Stoyan Vassilev: Because I was curious about it. And also because I decided that enough time had passed since I knew the people and the events that these stories were based on. I had the time to gestate the material, remove myself from it emotionally, leave out the unimportant stuff and let imagination fill the gaps that memory couldn’t.

 

FH: How would you describe your writing practice? Is there a consistency in your practice, or is it more whimsical? Something in-between? What approach do you think "works" best for you?

 

SV: It used to be wildly whimsical. I’d get this awesome idea. I’d pound on it for a week or two while the idea was fresh in my head. Then the initial impulse would wither, and I’d run out of steam. I’d stare at the blinking cursor for a day or two before I’d abandon the story. But then I’d get this other awesome idea and so on.

 

I like how Jack London puts it: we don’t wait for inspiration, we chase it down with a club. Another quote from an author I admire, Hemingway, says that inspiration is a state of the nerves, not an artistic state. So my two favorite American writers had a routine and wrote every day whether they felt like it or not. So I decided to give that a try.

 

Now I try to write for two hours every morning. Between 7AM and 9AM, usually. Just sitting down at my desk and thinking about the current project for two hours is enough. Writing a paragraph or two is good, a page even better, but that does not always happen. Heck, just deleting a paragraph or two that did not belong in the story I consider a good day’s work. There are periods of remission when I don’t keep to this routine but I try to keep these periods short.

 

FH: What have you discovered about yourself as a writer, through the process of writing the stories in Hope Seven?

 

SV: That I had more material in me than I suspected. Something that somewhere, sometime I’d come across--a remark, a joke, a non-sequitur, an odd dream that had stayed with me somehow--, proffered itself in the process of writing. Stuff like that does not always make it onto the page, it is often too raw, but it does make the process more interesting.

 

FH: What are you thinking about for future projects?

 

SV: I will concentrate on writing more short stories for now. I like the format; it offers plenty of room for experiment and does not demand the kind of long-term commitment that a novel does. I wish to have more stories take place in Hope Seven, the fictional neighborhood of Sofia, as well as in suburban America.

 

 

Vassilev will be reading selections from his newly published stories on November 28^th, 7pm, at The Booksmith in the Haight-Ashbury district, as we celebrate the launch of his Michael Rubin award-winning debut collection, Hope Seven.

 

WHAT: Michael Rubin Book Award Release Party

 

WHEN: Wednesday, November 28^th, 7pm.

 

WHERE: The Booksmith

                 1644 Haight Street

                  San Francisco, CA 94117

                  (415) 863-8688

 

$12 donation for admission (the cost of your copy of the book)