‘We’re all a blend of endearing and off-putting qualities’

As the author Curtis Sittenfeld publishes her first short story collection, she tells Cyan Turan why she enjoys skewering our expectations of how people ‘should’ behave

WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WRITING A NOVEL VERSUS A SHORT STORY?

There are several thematic echoes across these stories – characters undone by romantic longing or regret, women who feel irrational loathing for other women, ambivalence about fame – and I made the choice to embrace the repetition of themes. I think they reinforce one another and reflect a very specific mind (mine!) and its preoccupations rather than being different from one another for the sake of it. I like how a story collection comes together into a unified whole, even though they’re not unified the way a novel is.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO WRITE THEM?

In the summer of 2016, after trying off and on for two decades, I had a short story accepted by The New Yorker. I’d mostly been writing novels since the 2005 publication of my first novel Prep, so I was returning to stories after a long time away and a lot of changes in my own life. After that first acceptance, most of these stories just poured out of me. Some reflected new ideas, but some contained ideas I’d been carrying around inside for years.

WHY DID YOU CALL THE BOOK YOU THINK IT, I’LL SAY IT ?

In one of the stories, a man approaches a woman he knows vaguely at a party and says to her,

“I’ll think it, you say it” – which she takes to mean she should give voice to the not particularly nice observations they’re making about other guests. My writer friend Emily pointed out that, in some ways, this is what I’m using my stories to do, to express to or for the reader what they might be reluctant to express.

ONE OF THE THEMES IS HOW PEOPLE MISREAD OTHERS. WHAT IS IT YOU MOST ENJOY ABOUT SKEWERING OUR EXPECTATIONS OF HOW PEOPLE ‘SHOULD’ BEHAVE?

I’m intrigued by how a person can be both educated and intelligent and still routinely act against her own best interests. I also love how in real life, individuals are never just one thing – we all are a blend of endearing and off-putting qualities.

MANY OF THE STORIES FOCUS ON ROMANCE…

I’m fascinated by what I see as the impossibility of truly understanding any couple from the outside. No one but the two people in the couple really knows how they treat each other when they’re alone together. I think some of my stories are attempts to guess at the inner workings of other people’s relationships.

WHAT IS YOUR WRITING PROCESS?

I try to write for a few hours every morning. I can crank out a first draft in a couple of weeks, but sometimes it doesn’t coalesce properly, and I need to spend much more time revising it.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

I’m writing a novel about if Hillary Clinton had fallen in love with Bill Clinton at Yale Law School, as she did, but never accepted his marriage proposals. In real life, she rejected him a few times before accepting. You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld (Doubleday, £16.99) out 3rd May