Cyclettes

Brooklyn-based writer and bookmaker Tree Abraham talks to Shelly Kawaja about her debut collection of essays and mixed media visuals.

Shelly Kawaja (SK) Congratulations on your new book, Cyclettes. I really enjoyed reading it! In Cyclettes, you describe cycling as a way of entering a state where your body is on autopilot and your brain at wakeful rest, “lost in daydream and wander.” Does cycling, or being a “rider of bikes,” inspire you to write, or does writing demand that you cycle? Can you tell us a little more about the relationship between cycling and writing and how your book got started?

Tree Abraham (TA): I wouldn’t say writing and cycling are exclusive partners. Cycling is one outlet for loosening knots inside my brain so that there is room for creativity to flow out. Swimming, shooting hoops, cleaning, gardening, walking, and the first moments of waking have similar effects. I am always looking for opportunities to move slower, pause, be in a state of mental emptying out. That’s when new ideas arrive fully formed. I think my clearest thoughts spin at the pace of a bike ride, so sometimes after a particular stretch of stress, over socializing, or busyness in a day, I will ride my bike as if it’s a metronome through which my mind can sync back to its natural rhythm.

SK: Cyclettes opens with a picture of a clown, your first birthday pin, and a tricycle, the book continues to be very visually interesting—drawings, charts, maps, collages, photographs, and other visual artifacts—did you have this visual intermingling in mind when you set out to write this book, or is it something you came to as went along?

TA: When I began, I thought this project might become a mainly image-led chapbook—photos, ephemera, and diagrams documenting bicycles, cycles, metaphorical lines and signs—interspersed with often short and a few longer fragmentary writings about cycling. As a book designer, I take the words of authors and translate them into visuals. It’s second nature for me to have a feeling or idea and want to communicate it in an immediate and distilled form that breaks away from textual description. But the project got longer and I became more invested in the narrative and new themes emerged, and then, it was a book!

SK: You don’t call yourself a cyclist, but a “rider if bikes.” I think one of those terms creates the space to bike handsfree with glittery nails and going flying over the handlebars, and the other one doesn’t. If you called yourself a cyclist, this book would probably look very different. Can you elaborate a little on why you call yourself a “rider of bikes,” and how that serves the intention of your book?

TA: I preface this distinction early on in the book. The word cyclist makes me picture a certain type of person who wears spandex and speeds fast for long distances on a country road. They are aerodynamic with singular focus. To be a cyclist, I would think, requires a high-level of athleticism and a series of rules of engagement when mounting a bike. But to ride a bike only requires having access to a bicycle and knowing how to ride it. Such a relationship carries a wider freedom in who can be a rider and the bike’s purpose. Cyclettes explores all that I have learned about the potential of this kind of freedom.

SK: What is your theory of writing?

TA: This will likely change as I age and write more, but for now, I am most drawn to a creative nonfiction that is experimental in form, lyrical in language, and introspective yet researched. They say that an essay is about an idea and a poem is about a feeling. I think most of my work is about trying to make a feeling into an idea. I start each work trying to confront a question that has been nagging at me over several years, appearing in my life in various costumes, but fundamentally like a pea of discomfort under a stack of mattresses waiting to be singled out and held between my fingers at eye level to see what it’s all about. Thus far, by the time I have completed the book, the nagging goes away. Not that I have answered the question unequivocally, but I have exhausted my need to attempt further response.

SK: What writers (or artists in other forms/media) have been formative in shaping how you write? How?

TA: I can’t speak specifically on the “how”, because it was more a soulful entering, but these are the writers that I discovered within a few months of each other, after which I immediately felt implored to write. Or rather, I read these writers and realized that my kind of thoughts could belong outside my head as the kind of art I desire to make: Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, Annie Dillard, Leanne Shapton, Mary Ruefle, Durga Chew-Bose, Sheila Heti, Valeria Luiselli, Jenny Offill, Rachel Cusk.

SK: What writing rituals or behavioral patterns do you follow in where, when, or how you write?

TA: My process looks a little different with every manuscript I have worked on as I am learning how to maintain a consistent writing practice while having a full-time job and full-time personal life, but there are some patterns. Where: I like to be extremely comfy, legs up, often in beds or sofas, rarely sitting at a desk or coffee shop table. The only exception to this is a train. I write very well amidst the whir of a moving train. When: mornings are the best, every morning if I can, but I miss many days. And Sundays or a stretch of vacation or retreat away where I have nothing else on the agenda. It’s ideal to return to the work regularly, maintaining a flow of thoughts about it as I move through the days to be able to develop my insights in deeper and more unexpected directions. How: I have Google Docs offline on my phone so that even if I am away from my computer, I can capture stray thoughts and throw them into my working document. I go down rabbit holes of internet readings and research and throw those findings into the same document. When it is time to write, I often first read a little bit from a book that’s tone aligns with what I am striving to achieve, listen to a few songs that have a similar mood, and reread a couple pages from where I last left off. Whether I write for 15 minutes or three hours depends on so many external factors, but I just will myself to show-up to it in whatever capacity I have and leave it when I need to. There’s a difference between feeling a resistance to write because one is avoiding thinking through hard things, and when the resistance is coming from the physical taxation of life itself and recognizing in oneself when to push on or wrap up for the day.

SK: What specific book(s) inspired your recent work?

TA: In the months before beginning to write Cyclettes, I think there were several books that I was reading that unconsciously inspired my approach. Joe Brainard’s I Remember is simply a list of everything he could remember, just as my book began as a list of every bicycle I could remember. The list acted like an archive, the meaning only appearing like a pattern when the items were all lined up. Tamara Shopsin’s Arbitrary Stupid Goal was similar in its recalling of anecdotes about her father. Just the little details of the days that thread together one’s existence. Anelise Chen’s So Many Olympic Exertions used fragmentary reflections on failure in sport to process feelings of motivation and meaning in broader life. Each felt like they were granting me permission to take seriously the ordinary as the spine of the story.

SK: When you’re talking about different stages in the process (ie. drafting, revising, getting feedback, submitting work for publication, etc.) …what are the emotions that dominate your thought? If you were to choose a metaphor for each of the steps of the writing process, what would they be?

TA: So with my most recent writing, the stages of my process have mirrored the stages in rendering realistically a work of visual art or even designing a book cover (processes I have undertaken many more times than I have had in writing and perhaps where my creative practice originates). How I feel at every stage is a little mixture of the same emotions: giddy and amazed, challenged and tortured. To be a book designer requires a very thick skin because of how many people provide critical feedback and input at every stage of the revision process, so I went into writing not being precious or sensitive about the work and understanding it as needing to be tailored to an intended audience.

PHASE	IN WRITING	IN ART MAKING
One	Note-taking, reading, researching, journalling	Gathering inspiration and assembling references and mood boards for style and content
Two	Making a loose outline	Creating a crude thumbnail sketch
Three	Using the outline to paste all my thoughts and findings into sections	Sketching in pencil the composition, many rough marks overlapping, on scrap paper
Four	Organizing all the ideas within each section and putting everything into a narrative, but not in a stylized succinct voice	Laying another scrap paper over the first and tracing the sketchy suggestion with confident fluid lines that further soften and abstract the first technical outline.
Five	Polishing words and cutting bulk from the writing so it dapples and flows	Laying art paper over the scrap paper and using it as a guide, but masking details and accuracy of shape to create more abstract character
Six	Receiving feedback on structure and where clarification is needed, what should be removed	Bringing the art on the computer and altering colors, contrast, and cropping to satisfy requests for legibility and saleability
Seven	Finalized for print	Finalized for print

SK: How do you know as a writer if a piece of work that you have been labouring on, is finally completed?

TA: It is easy to feel like a work could always be improved upon, especially in the perfectionism that plagues one’s own practice. I like to remember that as a reader, with a critical look at any book, I would have editorial notes. There are an infinite number of ways to execute a creative piece. However, for me, a book is the intersection of a particular time and place. It is my reflections and learnings at this particular age and climate that has made this book so. I will go on and live more realizations and write some of them down and they will find their own home. But so long as I have been fully present, vulnerable, and curious of the connections happening around me in this time and place, I am a big believer in christening things good enough for now.