Becky Hagenston discusses her story “Voluntary,” featured in the Spring 2025 issue of Colorado Review, with Editorial Assistant Gwynnivere Riethoven.
Becky Hagenston is the author of four award-winning story collections, most recently The Age of Discovery and Other Stories, winner of The Journal’s Non/Fiction Book Prize. She is a professor of English at Mississippi State University.
GR: Thank you again for sharing your work “Voluntary” with the Colorado Review. To begin, could you give a brief summary of the story?
BH: It’s about a high school student in the 1980s. Her friend—or former friend— is admitted to the Johns Hopkins psychiatric unit for an eating disorder, and she asks the narrator to sneak into her house and pretend to be her ghost.
GR: Could you talk a little bit about your writing process? More specifically where or how you got the inspiration to write about the complexities of human identities and relationships.
BH: My writing process is a total mess! I started this story maybe ten years ago and kept getting stalled because I think there wasn’t enough complexity. I had to figure out what the various strands of the story were. I had a folder full of drafts, but I didn’t know enough about the narrator to understand why she was telling this story. And at one point, it was a third person narrator. Changing the point of view and weaving in the narrator’s mother made things start to fit together.
I also had to think about the narrator’s relationship with her friend. In an early draft, Janice just asked the narrator to visit her—nothing else. Then I read Charles Baxter’s wonderful collection There’s Something I Want You to Do, and I watched a video where he talks about “request moments.” And that’s when I knew there had to be a more compelling request to set things in motion.
GR: I find it difficult, sometimes, to write from a place of authenticity, to know what should be said or left unsaid, and how to express intricate emotions and thoughts in a way that is linguistically satisfying and convincing. Do you find yourself struggling to authentically express your thoughts and emotions through your writing? Or do you find writing fiction somewhat of a refuge?
BH: I find the whole process a struggle, and that’s why it takes me so many drafts to get a story where it needs to be. Or not. I have a lot of stories that just didn’t get there, and I save them and sometimes I can use them for parts. I do feel that I can be more authentic writing fiction than I could ever be writing memoir or creative nonfiction.
I also read my work out loud. Sometimes what seems fine on the page doesn’t ring true when I say it out loud, so I find that to be very helpful. And I’ve always been a fan of carrying around a notebook and writing things down, because that makes me pay attention. I think that can add a sense of authenticity to a story. For instance, I might write about a real place (my high school, for instance) but the characters and situations are fictional.
GR: To go off that previous question, I’ve found that writing a short story well can be incredibly challenging. “Voluntary” is only eight pages long and yet it’s so wonderfully crafted. How do you manage to craft a compelling, emotionally resonant story with enough depth to develop characters and evoke real emotion, all within so few pages?
BH: I also find it very challenging! It takes me a while to figure out what goes and what stays. Originally, the end of the current draft was in the middle, and there was more at the end, and it just seemed to be going on way too long. I’m a big believer in letting things sit for a while. Then I go back and it’s easier to see where I’ve gone off-track or over-stuffed the story. At one point, this story was probably almost twice as long as it is now. I find cutting backstory to be a very satisfying thing to do!
GR: What advice do you have for fiction authors just starting their writing journeys? Is there anything you wish you would’ve known when you were starting?
BH: Feeling stuck and panicked is part of the process—or at least, I’ve never been able to skip that part. And it’s okay if a story takes a year or more, or if it just stalls. I find it useful to have several things going at once, so when I get stuck on one thing, I can move on to another. But everyone has their own process, so find what works for you and stick to that. Be patient. Pay attention. And always keep reading, because that’s part of the process, too.
Gwynnivere Riethoven is a first-year MA Literature student at Colorado State University. An area of research and writing that interests her is the discourse on migrant diaspora and the deterritorialization of language in 20th and 21st-century literature.