You belong to the same generation, having witnessed, participated, observed, and (re)told the same period and history. When I invited you to join this conversation, I was thinking that in the twenty-first century, we’re more and more affected by the rapid developments in the media, technology, and artificial intelligence, along with the war happening right next to us, a growing number of geopolitical conflicts, and fears about climate change and humanity’s future. In this context, it’s not a matter of course that someone is sitting in their room writing poems, crafting short stories or novels. What do you think? What inspires you to work these days?
Lina Buividavičiūtė: I was thinking about this on my way to this conversation. I’m still curious about exploring myself and others, and the world. I always learn something when I write, and I tend to discover something of my own. Writing, for me, is a living thing, an act of life, a possibly naïve form of resistance in this apocalyptic world of wars. Even with so much darkness and death around, I consciously choose the living thing. I choose life. Out of destruction – both external and internal, that of the world and my own – I try to put together something constructive.
I am also motivated by feedback, of course. If I was only writing for myself, I would just stash all my poems in a drawer. My hope is that things I analyse and discover resonate with others. It’s always a joy when someone reads my texts and tells me they feel the same way or that the world I write about might feel foreign to them but they still find it interesting.
Tomas, can you pick it up from here?
Tomas Petrulis: Why do I write? I suppose the real question is: why do I still write? I think I’ve simply grown used to the medium of language. I’m better at playing with language than technology – say, a camera. Unlike Lina, who said that writing opens up new things and discoveries, I think writing does the opposite for me – I end up knowing and understanding less and less.
Ieva Dumbrytė: I can relate to this. There’s a scene about war in my latest book. Before writing it, I’d even made a note that I need to research war more so that I can really understand what I’m writing and why. But when the war in Ukraine began, I realized: I don’t understand what war is anymore.
It feels like the further I go, the less I know why I write in the first place. I think it was the literary scholar Solveiga Daugirdaitė who once said that literature used to have a clear social role: it would inspire society, save lives, serve as a secret language through which people discovered deeper meaning. Today, when everything is out in the open, the only meaning literature seems to have contained is artistic. So why do I write? I guess it’s because there are things boiling inside me, things that tear me apart and need to be expressed. Of course, it comes through pain, through the cross and the struggle – because I write after work, I have to make time, give up many other things, scale back my social life. I write because it seems I can’t not write.
How about you, Mykolas? Can you not write?
Mykolas Sauka: I think I can.
So why do you write?
Mykolas: When people ask me, I usually say it comes from a sense of duty. A duty to write down what’s happening in me and around me. But I’m not sure it’s duty – maybe it’s more of a way to hide?
I remember starting a diary when I was nine or so. I simply used it to record events: how many times I went swimming that day, how many times I walked the dog, who came over, which friend visited my sister, things like that. I also collected notes from my parents and stuck them into the diary – for instance, when they went fishing, they’d leave a note saying “We’ve gone fishing,” sometimes with a drawing. And when I opened the diary years later, I realized that there were no feelings in it. Just dry facts. I felt disappointed that I hadn’t written down anything interesting or captured how I felt. It’s like I’d failed a task I was meant to carry out. Maybe that’s what the “I can’t not write” means? There’s this inner need, which I can’t always justify.
I’ve been thinking about what you said, Saulius – that the time we live in is difficult, almost apocalyptic. I think about this when I write, and when I sculpt. What if this is the last book, the last sculpture? Feels like something’s breathing down my neck, the way ChatGPT is generating language and images – what if we’re no longer needed? When I was writing my book, I felt an actual sense urgency, the anxiety that fuels creativity. War fuels it, too. You find yourself wondering: how much time do I have left?
Do you think creativity is a retreat from the world and external stimuli, perhaps even a form of escapism from oneself and reality? Or is it more of an addition to personal life, which is happening despite everything else?
Mykolas: I don’t know – I don’t have much of a life going on, really. It’s more… primal, let’s say.
Well, you did describe it in your novel.
Mykolas: True (laughs – SV). I try to compose it all into something artistic. I would be dull otherwise – just endless scrolling and eating. Or insomnia. And nothing more.
Tomas, how about you?
Tomas: Very often, I catch myself realizing that writing doesn’t actually start when I sit down to write – by the way, I mostly write by hand – but much earlier. I start writing in my head while walking down the street or sitting somewhere. So I wouldn’t say writing is an addition. It’s more like an equal state of consciousness. For example, leading a museum tour is one state of consciousness for me – it’s something I have been doing lately – and writing is another. Writing starts long before I actually pick up a pen and a piece of paper.
I think there’s a parallel here with photography: you carry around, say, a film camera, you spot an image worth capturing, and if you’re quick enough, you snap the shot. Then you get home, develop the film, and see if anything came of it.
Ieva: Something that journalists say is that you’re not only a journalist while you’re working on a report, but all the time. When you’re showering, dreaming, whatever.
Tomas: Yes. I actually really enjoy photography too. Sometimes I head out with my camera and don’t take a single shot. But I still feel like I’ve been photographing. Like I was immersed in the process.
Lina: Writing is life for me, I think. I’ve gotten used to exploring myself, observing the world, recognizing intertextuality. Even when I’m watching a film, I catch myself slipping into writer or reviewer mode. I might notice something that resonates or something I can use in a review or a poem. This kind of constant engagement can be exhausting, so I try to find ways to switch off. Sometimes I’ll read a psychological thriller, for instance, knowing full well I’m not going to use any of it, that I’ll just let the text wash over me.
Ieva, how do you feel about this?
Ieva: I’m in a bit of a different situation. My job is very time-consuming. Whatever time I have left for writing is what I’d call “stolen.” So it’s hard for me to say whether writing is more of an addition to life or an escapism you mentioned earlier. I really want to write, but it’s only through suffering that I manage to carve out time for it. It’s a toxic relationship. I can only imagine what it would be like if I had all the time in the world to write. In that case, I think writing would be my life, and everything else would be an addition.
Tomas: Maybe it’s a question of modality – when do you feel most intensely alive? While writing or while working?
Ieva: I don’t know. While living, perhaps. When you’re writing, you become a chronicler of life. I’m not sure what exactly you mean though.
Tomas: I mean the intensity of the lived experience. Sometimes writing feels so intense, you feel more alive doing that than, say, meeting someone or talking to people.
Ieva: For me, writing actually takes away a lot of social life: because if you have a day job and then sit down to write in the evenings, you can only meet people on weekends, assuming no other commitments come up, of course. The poet Ramūnas Liutkevičius told me something that really stuck with me: life is a necessary condition for writing. If you want to write, you have to live. Comedians say the same thing: if you’re always working on your material, there’s no time left to live and find material for new skits. I have no idea how Jules Verne wrote Around the World in Eighty Days without ever leaving his room though, so maybe there are exceptions.
Tomas: As I mentioned before, I often write without actually writing. For instance, when I’m talking to people, some other level of consciousness tunes in.
Ieva: I also think that interacting with others and experiencing life is essential. Do you ever find yourselves wanting to get into certain situations on purpose, just to make something happen? Such as running across the street on a red light? Sometimes I get scared that nothing happens in my life.
Tomas: Somehow I don’t really go looking for situations anymore – they find me.
Ieva: Fantastic. The ultimate goal of a writer!
I’d like to switch to the emotional side of writing. You’ve already mentioned that writing that sometimes it’s downright painful. But do you experience positive emotions too while writing, after all? Happiness, excitement, joy?
Lina: I think the good feelings come when you manage to write something the way you wanted to, or close to it. When the text still feels real even after you return to it after a while. First, you recognize that yourself, then, hopefully, others do too. I keep coming back to the fact that feedback and reflections from others really matter to me. But in the actual process of writing? I don’t know if it’s possible to completely avoid painful moments. Things often don’t work out, or you write with this kind of all-or-nothing intensity, like someone’s holding a knife to your throat.
That said, with my third book, I really tried to move away from the narrative of excessive suffering. I wanted to change a bit, look for more positivity, both in my motivation for writing and in the texts themselves. Still, I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to write from a place of complete wellness – if you’re happy and totally content with everything, can you create literature that affects and moves people? I guess that’s more of a rhetorical question.
So, does writing come from a place of lack?
Lina: Yes – lack, deficit, hunger. Hunger has a flavor of suffering, too. I can’t sit still. I’m constantly restless – I have to write. I feel something’s missing, and I need to create it.
Tomas: Well, I wrote the texts for my first book without any suffering at all! (laughs – SV) Somehow it all came very easily. If anything, it came from a kind of cheerful place. Ironically cheerful.
There’s a famous poetry collection by Sigitas Parulskis, Iš ilgesio visa tai (All That Out of Longing) – accordingly, you could have named your book All That Without Suffering!
Ieva: That would be phenomenal in Lithuanian literature! (laughs – SV)
Tomas: Well, to be fair, even my irony has a little trace of suffering in it. But honestly, when I was writing my first book, I didn’t feel any major suffering. There might have been more of it when I was writing my second book – different experiences emerged, and I felt a kind of absurdity of life. Still, I wouldn’t say I suffered in the process of writing itself, that the poems were dragged out of me. That’s more accurate when talking about my third book, where I was wrestling with language, trying to resist its inertia. In fact, the real suffering hit last year, when I got a grant from the Lithuanian Council for Culture – I had to write! (laughs – SV) But I realized that once I forced myself to write, eventually I’d “turbo-charge” myself and get back into the groove.
Ieva: But isn’t suffering actually the default state of not writing?! I feel like the hardest part is when you’re not writing. Either because you don’t find the chance, or, for instance, after a long editing process you’re scared of what your editor will say, nervous about the feedback, and then even opening your laptop feels terrifying. You end up taking it all way too personally.
Tomas: Your genre – prose – takes more time. When I write poetry, it’s…
Ieva: But do you still suffer when you’re not writing?
Tomas: Right now, I feel totally free. I’m taking a break from writing.
Ieva: And you can just rest, peacefully?
Tomas: Yes, totally. I feel completely switched off. I used to have all sorts of creative crises before – it used to be tough.
Mykolas, how about you? Could you compare sculpture and writing? I imagine the suffering in sculpture might be more physical?
Mykolas: Honestly, sculpture is actually a pretty joyful activity. Once I start to see the form taking shape, I can really enjoy it. And I still have a sense of perspective with it – I know that in the future, something will work out. But with writing, there’s no perspective and no joy whatsoever. The only time I feel a flicker of joy is when I read something I’ve already written and think, maybe that’s not too bad, that might actually be kind of funny. But at the same time, it’s done – you’ve already written it, there’s nothing left to enjoy. Move on to the next thing. Keep going, Mykolas. And so it goes.
When I write, I never know if anything will come of it. And editing really is pure agony. Sometimes I get these good streams of text down, but then editing just wrecks them. Because, unlike Tomas, I don’t develop ideas in my head first. Instead, they come while I’m writing.
But when it comes to the material for your second book, you do go on dates and then reflect on those experiences in your writing, right?
Mykolas: Yes, totally. I take risks, try to get out of my comfort zone, go looking for the life I could write about. Then I jot it down and it feels like it’s so fresh. Great material, juicy stuff! And then I start cutting it because you can’t just leave it as is – and some of that effect disappears.
Honestly, suffering runs through the whole writing process. Compared to that, sculpture feels like a breather – those wood blocks, sawdust. There’s a kind of peace to it. Maybe because I’m a professional sculptor – that’s my habitat.
Tomas: I still have hope that someday I’ll write something purely out of joy! (laughs – SV)
Lina: Look, do you ever get this fear: you finish a book and start wondering if you’ll ever write anything again? If someone can take away your ability to write? You write a book, then you submit texts to the Poetry Spring festival anthology, and you think to yourself, maybe the editor says it’s total nonsense. This, of course, is a self-worth thing. But I always feel like something’s chasing me with a whip, telling me I must not stop writing.
Lina, you mentioned self-worth. What do you think of the relationship between creativity and self-worth? How does our self-esteem affect our desire – or reluctance – to create? Ieva, for example, talked about fear sometimes getting in the way of starting to write.
Tomas: It’s a bit strange, because I wouldn’t say I have a particularly high self-esteem – I’m super self-critical, especially when it comes to work or everyday stuff. But with writing, it’s different. I’m not saying I’m always happy with what I write, but the whole self-worth question kind of disappears when I’m creating. I don’t beat myself up or drag myself down when I’m writing. I trust my poetry.
But is it important to you how others receive your poetry?
Tomas: If I trust the texts myself, then not really. I’m curious to check how people understand me, but I don’t put too much weight on their judgment.
Ieva, how about you?
Ieva: It’s complicated. I don’t really understand my own self-worth. In everyday life, I feel like I’m afraid to talk about certain things, afraid of discussion. But writing becomes this safe space – at least while I’m doing it, I can take things back, edit them, say whatever I want. Despite having low self-worth, I can build cities and invent my own worlds when I’m creating, even ramble in ways I never allow myself to in public. In real life, I might be afraid of others’ opinions, of offending someone, but writing sets me free. And that’s amazing!
Tomas: I’m so foolish that I sometimes allow myself to rant in front of people too.
Ieva: I admire that. Maybe it’s because you actually have self-worth?
Tomas: Well, I might have some, I guess. But honestly, rambling and saying ridiculous things is one of life’s great pleasures for me.
Ieva: It’s something I really appreciate! Even if I’m afraid to act freely when I’m with others, I don’t want to offend them or accidentally hit a nerve.
And you, Lina?
Lina: If we’re talking about all kinds of nonsense, I let myself ramble on in the family circle – within limits, of course. I feel safe there because my loved ones know me really well. As for writing, I think I write pretty boldly. I’m always trying to break taboos. Even if I’m scared of what people might think, I try to separate myself from that fear. I don’t want my self-worth to get in the way.
Mykolas, at those basketball practices we have with other writers and artists, you probably swear the most whenever you miss a shot. Would you say that means your self-esteem is low?
Mykolas: I’m afraid it does. When I don’t swear, I usually play better. Then I actually have more energy, I go harder for rebounds.
Would you say that’s a good analogy for writing, too?
Mykolas: Yep, absolutely. We waste so much time beating ourselves up and feeling sorry for ourselves – at least I do. It took me forever to convince myself that I’m capable of writing something worthwhile. I even had to write down some motivational quotes on a piece of paper, like a foundation to make myself believe I could create.
Do you still look at that piece of paper?
Mykolas: Well, it was always on my desk when I was editing the book.
I was also trying to boost my self-esteem reading light fiction – you know, just simple stuff from the library. You open it and think: oh look, this really isn’t that scary, it’s written in such a simple way. Those rows of books in the library can feel so intimidating, but once you open one, it’s not that bad. Popular fiction helped me feel a better about myself.
Do you ever read one of those critically acclaimed, hyped-up books and think, I could write this, maybe even something better!
Mykolas: Oh yes, I’ve been there. And, of course, the opposite has happened too (laughs – SV).
There are a few more things I’d like to touch on during this conversation. One of them is how an artist, a creator is formed. If we say that one of the essential qualities for any artist is having an authentic relationship with reality, then it makes sense to ask how much that connection is shaped by childhood, adolescence, as well as background and social environment. When you think about your own upbringing, do you see any signs that might have led you toward creativity, imagination, or a different way of seeing the world?
Lina: I wrote my first poem when I was eight – it was about my favorite toy pig, Čiukas. Any time we had a creative assignment at school, I’d get excited.
I do feel like a lot of experiences from my childhood and teenage years make their way into my writing – especially the darker ones. I was really affected by my environment. I was born in 1986, and I like to say I grew up somewhere between horror and beauty. That contrast shows up in my books too: some lean more toward horror, others toward beauty. I remember being in 10th or 11th grade, walking to some evening rehearsal, and on the way I’d see lit windows – as well as the dark ones – and my imagination would take off. I’d start thinking about other people’s lives, imagining things, inventing stories. I think even back then, I felt this sense of lack: is what I’m seeing enough? Am I seeing the world sharply enough? That said, there was a break in my writing – for two years when I was studying odontology. During those studies, I eventually felt I was in the wrong place, that I wanted to write and create again. The first pieces I wrote that felt like they might belong in a book came after some great internal blows.
Tomas: I started writing more seriously in late adolescence. I remember myself as a child who genuinely enjoyed retreating from others, going off on little walks by myself. In hindsight, I seems like I was doing something like writing in those moments of retreat –dreaming, imagining things, feeling self-sufficient. For a while, I didn’t really miss other kids. There was a kind of “mental writing” already happening.
Did you have a group of friends back then?
Tomas: I did. I felt pretty comfortable socially. The older I got, the fewer opportunities there were to retreat like that. But I missed it, so even later, whenever I could, I’d find ways to detach and be by myself. Like some kind of a hermit.
Ieva, what was your childhood like?
Ieva: I didn’t see anything in myself that pointed toward becoming a writer. I was wild, I had many friends, and I just wanted to live to the fullest, that kind of life of an absolutely wild child. I had a sister who committed suicide when she was fourteen. She was probably ill – she was diagnosed with depression almost in infancy, which was kind of unheard of at the time. What I remember is her always writing – everywhere, even on the wardrobes. She’d translate English books, ones about Native Americans, and read and write poetry. We were looking through the texts she had left behind, and we didn’t even know which poems were hers. This really shook me. Since she passed, I’ve felt like I’ve been carrying her with me. Maybe writing is my way of continuing my sister’s life? If she was still alive, maybe I wouldn’t be writing at all. In a way, I think I’m living something out for her through my writing.
Mykolas, you grew up in a family of artists. How did that shape you? Did you ever feel the urge to rebel and do anything but art? Like becoming a basketball player, race car driver, or astronaut?
Mykolas: I’ve never understood that whole “I want to be an astronaut” thing. Where do kids even get that idea?
I guess it’s the mystery of space – something unreachable, unknown, like creativity itself.
Mykolas: For me, growing up in Dusetos, even Zarasai felt unreachable. (laughs – SV)
I wanted to be social, like Ieva, but I was more of a loner, like Tomas. I was often sick, so I spent a lot of time at home and read loads of books. Even today I’m sick again. (Mykolas had taken a COVID test that morning which came back positive, so he joined the conversation virtually – SV.) Maybe that’s why I write – because I’m sick. As for school… You know how it is. Even when there are good people and good teachers, the way that the system is built makes you not want to like anything, to repel you from any literature. After school, I didn’t want anything. I had to detox, rediscover things, learn how to enjoy them again. Speaking of writing, school wasn’t the space that made me want to be creative. All those essays and assignments felt completely foreign to me, forced – just like the astronaut idea.
I’d rather write at my grandparents’ place. I have these joyful memories of it. My grandma was an editor, and she let me use her typewriter. That was amazing – the stories you typed would appear on paper at once! They were probably useless, but the whole process felt like magic.
As for rebellion, I’m not sure. My parents are painters, and I chose a slightly different profession.
I’d like to move on to the question of style. Do you think it’s our personality and traits that impacts the style, which we then recode during the creative process? Or is it something we absorb culturally – through books, films, other forms of art?
Lina: I suppose style is both innate and learned. When I was working on my third book, I wanted to try something a little different, and maybe it worked. But then someone reads it and says that the themes might have changed, but my style is still recognizable, and I still write in a “Lina-esque” way.
Tomas: There’s also this idea of manner. If we think of style as what’s taught to you in school, through language norms, literature classes, then manner is how you manage to push back against it, to resist the widely accepted idea of what’s considered a “good” style.
When I say style, what I have in mind is probably closer to what you, Tomas, are calling manner. An individual style.
Tomas: That actually reminds me of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who makes a distinction between style and manner. According to him, style is more universal, and manner is the individual layer. It’s a kind of dialectic. So I’d probably lean more toward manner – it’s the thing that sneaks into the universal idea of what’s considered beautiful and good. I think I mess mine up my manner with some kind of inner tic, a Tourette’s syndrome.
Ieva: But maybe Tourette’s is actually a part of your style – your manner?
Tomas: Yes, it’s some kind of mannerism. I simply like messing things up.
Do you feel like your style – writing style – comes more from the manners you maintain in your social life, or is it something that’s shaped through your connection with language, culture, or the creative act itself?
Tomas: A lot of it definitely comes from my manners and everyday life. I often can’t resist the temptation to tease people, to troll a bit.
Lina: A trickster!
Tomas: Exactly. But I do that less now. The older I get, the calmer I become. But generally, that manner definitely contributes to my writing – whether we call it style or manner. It’s also about my connection with other texts. Sometimes I read something and think, “Oh damn…” And then I want to somehow twist it, disrupt it (laughs – SV).
Ieva, do you have a style in you that transfers into your writing?
Ieva: I think so. I mean, I can consciously include different kinds of mannerisms – things that aren’t really me – but at the core, that voice from real life is inevitable, especially in prose. If I had to fake my style across, say, 300 pages, it would triple the suffering. So I just think that this is who I am, and I accept that. It all comes from my roots, from my family. That said, sometimes I want to try and change it – I deliberately read different kinds of books, try to explore other perspectives, because I don’t want to run on the same track forever. I think my style comes from within, but I’d love to be able to change it.
Lina: Have you ever managed to change it, flip your natural way of being?
Ieva: It’s getting harder with age. I’d like to change a little more – be more of a lady, for example!
Tomas: As I get older, I’m becoming more and more like my father. It’s terrifying (laughs – SV).
Mykolas, what about you – do you have a style?
Mykolas: I don’t know. Style has always been mysterious to me. But one thing’s clear – if want to change your style, you have to start with your lifestyle, your attitude. Otherwise, simply reading different books won’t do the trick, I think.
You mentioned attitude. Do you think it’s important for a writer today to have a moral compass, values, taboos?
Mykolas: I think having values is a good thing. I just don’t like when they stick out in the text, when it feels preachy.
Lina: For me, courage is an important value for me. But it has to be motivated, not just for shock value.
Just to clarify, I mean values in a broader, human sense. Ethical, moral foundations that guide our behavior. How important is it for artists to really think those through today?
Tomas: In relationships with others, the plane of values and ethics really matters. The so-called golden rule: treat others how you want to be treated. Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Even though I said earlier that I enjoy provoking people or “trolling” them, I’ve started to like listening more, really hearing people out. Maybe we could call it a value. Or at least something to aim for.
As for literature – when I’m writing, I try to leave values out of it. Why would literature need them? Other things matter more. If values do show up in my writing, it’s usually in a deconstructive way. Like Lina, I also think courage is essential in literature, even if I’m not as courageous as I might seem. Beyond courage, there’s the question of taste, and form. If you go too far in a text, will it still contain a form, will it still be readable? What matters for me is that the text raises questions for the reader, not just disgusts them because of some kind of ugliness aesthetic.
Lina: What you’re saying fits with my idea of motivated courage – you have described it beautifully. I think that kind of courage shows up in all our writing.
When I think about courage, I also think about resisting clichés, recycled patterns, slogans, and kitsch. Opposing the dominant narratives in the media, things that have been vulgarized, sugar-coated.
Lina: Me too, at least partly. In my second book, for example, I really wanted to push back against the sugar-coated depiction of motherhood, to reveal its other side. But sometimes courage is also daring to talk about things that seem banal. Trying to talk about banal things in a non-banal way.
Mykolas, your novel is autofiction – some of the events and characters are closely connected to your personal life. Did it take courage to put it out into the world?
Mykolas: Indeed it did. Courage – and maybe a bit of stupidity too. Plus favorable circumstances. Like, for instance, finding out that the deadline for the Lithuanian Cultural Council grant was two days away (laughs – SV). Honestly, it’s uncomfortable to talk about courage.
Did you wonder about how the prototypes might react if they recognized themselves while reading the book?
Mykolas: I did. But I decided I had to put the book out there after all. Whatever happens, happens. I’m not even sure if that’s courage. I just wanted to see if the text had any value – I had to release it.
Ieva, are you courageous in life and in your writing?
Ieva: I think writing my novel took courage because I wrote about my family: my grandfather, grandmother, parents, great-grandparents, my sister, my brothers. We grew up under the influence of a generation that’s full of shame and the fear of standing out. So I was afraid of offending my family and loved ones. It took courage to write a sex scene and think “My mom’s going read this!” Writers are told to write for one person in mind – so I thought of my mom.
Tomas: You can think of God!
Ieva: God? If I thought of God as my reader, the text would be even more unhinged (laughs – SV). God is cool with everything. Mom still has some kind of filter.
Tomas: Sometimes when I write, I create this imaginary projection of God. God is the imagined reader for some of my texts.
Ieva: Oh Lord… Is this God critical of your writing?
Tomas: Oh, you better believe it! But I try…
Ieva: …to please Him?
Tomas: No, the opposite. I try to displease Him. I create myself a reader whom I can challenge. Like a straw scarecrow.
Sounds like this is turning into a whole separate conversation (everyone laughs – SV). That reminds me – when I published a short story about childhood and my dad, my mom messaged me to say that my father read it and said that’s not how it happened.
Ieva: I had a moment like this. My dad never reads. Reading is kind of a taboo for him, so my mom read it to him. There’s a scene in the novel where a dad beats someone with a bucket. Dad got really mad when he heard it. Mom said he felt upset, slammed doors, told her he’d never hit anyone with a bucket in his life. She had to calm him down.
One other thing I’d like to touch on is the literary community. Is it important for you to be a part of this community? To have writer friends, colleagues, people to meet and talk to?
Lina: It’s really important for me to have a few writer friends. Not just because they’re interesting people, but because we all go through similar struggles – writing blocks, crises, other things. When you share your concerns, you feel less alone. Writing can be a pretty isolating activity.
Tomas: I have a few literary friends I hang out with. We chat, joke around, and talk about deeper stuff too. But right now I actually miss having friends from other circles outside the literary world. In the past, most of my friends were from different fields. Now I feel like I’m missing that variety, that broader perspective.
Ieva: I’d like to trade a couple of friends with Tomas because my crowd is full of gravediggers, constructors, engine experts, power plant builders, and random old people (laughs – SV). I actually get a bit scared around literary people. I’m afraid I’ll say something weird or make a fool of myself. I get stressed about not knowing or understanding something. If I’m invited to a party full of literati, I usually try to avoid it. I’m stiff – people even tell me I look like a news anchor! But of course, the more you socialize, the more you realize they’re wonderful and that they’re just as weird as you. So I’m scared, but at the same time I also want to connect.
Mykolas?
Mykolas: Almost all my friends are sculptors. But I was thinking that in order to be creative, you don’t really need friends – whether literati or sculptors. What you need is to stay curious about the world and read the classics. Friends are more of a validation that you’re a proper writer. Maybe that’s why I’m still not fully confident in my writing. Even though I play basketball with writers, we never talk about literature. With sculptors, we talk about angle grinders. Although I would actually like to talk to them more about art and literature.
And how is your writing affected by the outside world, the geopolitical landscape?
Ieva: Before the full-scale war in Ukraine started, there was a Russian character in my novel. When the war broke out and I went back to edit, I started thinking how wrong that character felt. Things that seemed normal a month before suddenly felt off. That character began to lose meaning because of what was happening around us. But in the end, after talking to my editor, we decided to keep him in. If you start rewriting everything based on current politics, you might never finish the book you originally set out to write. Even using Russian names became difficult. I had a character named Varvara in an excerpt I published before the book came out. And the editor asked me if I could change it. So I did change it in the excerpt, but I kept it in the book. When you’re thinking only about yourself, you don’t want to change anything. But when you start thinking about the reader, especially someone who might be sensitive, who could be offended, it becomes harder to decide.
Tomas: I think the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic – all these shocks have been massively amplified by social media. I try to remember what it felt like before Facebook, and honestly, global events didn’t affect our day-to-day lives this hard. Social media intensifies the effect tenfold, and it also drives division. When you’re face to face with someone, you can read their expression, feel their energy, maybe realize they’re not actually your enemy. And when you’re communicating on social media, you don’t hear the other person’s voice, their emotions, their irony – you can end up writing the worst things about them, and they can do the same to you. I think people are getting exhausted of all the arguing online.
As for writing – yes, it affects creativity too. For instance, there’s a pro-Palestinian piece in my book, written in response to what’s happening in Gaza. There’s also a piece that reflects on the war in Ukraine. Some texts touch on the pandemic. So real-world events are captured in my writing. It’s really important to me not to drain the texts or make them overly pure, all about abstract eternal values. What matters to me is reflecting on the signs of the times.
Lina: I remember that even before the war in Ukraine, I’d been thinking a lot about my family’s history, and I published a poem called “Laiškas karo vaikui” (“Letter to a War Child”) in my second book. Looking at it now, the text gives me this eerie feeling, like there was some kind of premonition in it. Otherwise, geopolitical issues don’t affect the topics of my writing as much as they affect me as a person. They make me feel unsafe but at the same time stimulate a desire to live even more intensely, to live in literature, not to put anything off.
Mykolas: As for me, I feel paralyzed by this situation. It seems like the right time to be writing something that captures the era on a more global scale. But how can this be done if nothing seems to be happening around me? Or maybe I’m just not seeing it, I’m not involved, I’m not out there delivering aid to Ukraine. Maybe I could just copy down the headlines every day? Sometimes I feel compelled to write down the headlines in my journal, to record what’s going on globally. But then I ask myself – what’s the point? I could always look it up later if I really wanted to trace it back. But then again, what if I can’t trace it back? What if the past gets falsified or rewritten? So there, I don’t really know what to do.
Let the last question of this conversation look into the future: how does each of you imagine yourselves twenty years from now?
Ieva: I think I’ll go crazy. I keep hearing stories of people who lose it when they hit fifty. I’m sure I’ll keep chickens. Hopefully, I’ll stop suppressing myself and fully embrace my authentic self. I can still hold myself together, which is probably where all the anxiety and panic comes from. So I can picture myself going crazy and living this wild, unbothered life with my chickens.
Tomas: In twenty years – if I’m still alive – I’ll definitely be editing almanacs, anthologies, and collections of all sorts of texts.
Interviewer: What kind of texts?
Tomas: Ones written by AI (laughs – SV). I’ll be the compiler, an editor. That’s how I see my prospects.
Thinking about AI, it might actually be interesting to write a bunch of texts myself and then say they were supposedly written by artificial intelligence.
Ieva: Now that’s real courage!
Lina, how do you see yourself in the future? And will you contribute some texts for Tomas – the compiler?
Lina: If he asks – with pleasure. You can even say they were written by AI, Tomas.
Otherwise, I’m not sure. I feel like I’d like to keep writing. And I’d love for my son to keep going with his climbing career. He tells me, “I’m bringing you medals – that’s my contribution to the family.” So even if that’s not directly about literature, I really hope he keeps succeeding in his own thing and keeps bringing those medals home.
And you, Mykolas?
Mykolas: I don’t think much will have changed. I’ll be in my studio. There will be asthma, silicosis, joint pain, back problems. All sorts of hernias. A whole collection of problems.
Will there be anything bringing you joy?
Mykolas: I don’t know. Maybe young people?
Ieva: A new angle grinder? (laughs – SV).
Mykolas: Yep, a new angle grinder. You can definitely write that down, that’s spot on. A new angle grinder!
Thank you all.
