Meet Chafic LaRochelle

Chafic LaRochelle doesn’t flinch. His writing is as direct as the satirical gaze he casts upon his characters. Ruthlessly biting and sardonically funny, LaRochelle exposes the dangerous, false narratives we construct when entitlement and insecurity take hold. Whether driven by cowardice or maddening jealousy, the characters in Know-It-All succumb to this self-perpetuating self-deception, leading to escalating, often bleakly humorous consequences.

Follow the link below to read Chafic’s fiction featured in SUBMIT #3

Know-It-All

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Chafic was gracious enough with his time to let us interview him!  Here is that interview!

What is your relationship to writing like? Do you love it? Hate it? Do you think your art comes from within you or do you believe in muses, or a divine spirit that uses you as an antenna?

My relationship to writing is adversarial. Rare are the moments I sit down to write feeling good about the endeavor. When I fail to produce, I’m wracked with guilt. When I succeed, I get this nagging sense that I could’ve done more, that I could be doing more.

I don’t believe in muses or divine inspiration, but I do think writing is a largely unconscious process. Or rather, a conscious process of channeling one’s unconscious. An example: I’m a vivid dreamer. Every morning I wake up and think, how the fuck did I do that? Really—I think this literally every day. Like, how am I capable of generating hours upon hours of story, bloated with people and places and things, layered in themes and motifs, and all of it rendered in crisp technicolor? How can I do that in my sleep every single night, but barely eke out one good sentence while awake?

So what I try to do is channel my unconscious—clearly the superior storyteller. There resides a deep pool of influences and ideas and experiences constantly percolating down there. You just need to relax long enough to allow some of those fragile bubbles to float to the surface. Then it’s just a matter of typing. Psychedelics can be indispensable in bridging this gap.

Describe your writing routine or lack thereof. (E.g., early morning, late night, sporadic, feast or famine, number of words daily, etc.)

I write in fits and starts. Some days I’ll drop a few thousand words, others I can barely stand the sight of the page. I’ve tried to break myself into a writing routine, but it never sticks. It’s something I’m perpetually working on. This may be a forever-problem.

Do you write quickly and wash your hands when finished or do you labor day after day over one poem, scrutinizing every word choice?

As for logistics, I don’t plan my stories. I get a kernel of an idea that becomes the basis of a first draft. The first draft is very painful. I’m feeling my way in the dark. I’m a fraud. Once I have something, I spend months painstakingly editing, word by word, comma by comma.

Ideally, I’d be less particular and churn out stories quickly. But this happens to be my favorite part. Each successive read-through is like upping the brightness in the dark room I’ve been stumbling around. The feeling I get when I can at last rest and gaze upon the room and see the whole thing illuminated is hard to beat.

What is one thing you would change about the literary community/industry?

I may regret this, but it needs to be said. In today’s scene, many publishers place more emphasis on the identity of a story’s writer than on the story itself. Big publishers are the worst offenders.

I think a lot of writers are fed up, even those who have benefited. Every writer should have a voice, but elevating the artist over their artistry comes at the cost of quality. Good writing should stand on its own two feet. Everything else is a superficial distraction, and we have enough of those in everyday life.

I’d bet money that this trend has fueled the rise in self-publishing and Substack, as well as the success of smaller publishing outlets who have kept their focus on the heart of the craft.

What is a writer, to you?

The goal of storytelling is to make sense of the world. To knead order from chaos, distill the simple from the complex, siphon meaning from randomness. Our species is hardwired to tell stories. It’s up there with reproduction.

Each of us is a storyteller. Even those with no interest in film or literature are constantly telling themselves stories. About who they are and who they want to be, about why so-and-so said this and why such-and-such did that.

A writer is simply someone with a particularly strong storytelling drive. They feel compelled to commit words to paper, so that their stories may be shared with others; so that their stories may take on an existence independent of their teller.

These stories can unite or divide. They can impart wisdom or be weaponized. And yet they have no physical reality. They merely bounce around the lonely chambers of our skulls. But their power to shape how we perceive and behave is unmatched. The proof is all around you. Storytelling is the closest thing we have to real magic.

Tell us about the inspiration behind your work on BarBar.

Like the trickster or the sage, the hero or the villain, Know It All’s unreliable narrator is an archetypal figure. This person can appear and reappear in your life in many forms. Sometimes intimately as your friend or lover. Other times—lucky for you—they’ll manifest more tangentially, perhaps as your lover’s sister or your friend’s ex.

They have the personality of a tornado. Equal parts destructive and self-destructive. They are victims and offenders, usually at the same time. They are irascible and petty, spiteful and contemptuous, calculated yet wholly unpredictable even to themselves. They weave magnificent lies in real time and believe every word of it. They suffer unrelentingly, at the mercy of their own tangled minds. They’re a fascinating breed, dangerous to be around and tragic to contemplate.

Beware: Know It All is fiction, but the soul of it is real—all too real.

Tell us about the projects you are working on now and what’s next.

Besides a few pieces of sci-fi and literary fiction floating around the slush pile ether, I’m working on a horror novella about a heart transplant patient who wakes up to discover she is not quite herself.

What are your three desert island books?

Accepting one’s nominal chances of rescue, we must assume these will be our only literary companions till our last days. Therefore, we must choose wisely those books that offer fresh ideas upon each re-reading.

For this reason, I’d go with The Double by José Saramago, Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee, and the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges.

If I were feeling particularly hopeless, I might swap one of these out for anything by Carlo Rovelli. Sometimes a pop-sci book is precisely what one needs to soothe an aching soul starved of awe and wonder.