Serpil Yıldız Özdemir: I set out to explore not just the sides I show, but the ones I don't

Featuring a total of 25 stories, 'İçim Dışım Sobe' is Serpil Yıldız Özdemir's first book... While writing new stories, she felt like "a leaf caught in the wind" We had a delightful conversation with Özdemir, who described herself this way.

Interview: Öykü Naz Büyüksipahi

How did the idea for the book come about?

Actually, it was very difficult to bring about. Or rather, I resisted for a very long time. I have always found it very brave for people to decide that what they have written is worth reading and to knock on the doors of publishing houses. That's why I only shared my stories with those closest to me. Then, they started persistently asking for a book.

But I think the biggest inspiration started when a friend named Zeynep printed out my stories, stapled them together, and gifted them to friends in their most primitive form. That gave me the courage to submit my stories to competitions. My story titled 'Denize Sor' (Ask the Sea) won first place in a short story competition organized by Mürekkep Publishing and was published as the first story in an anthology.

After that, when my other stories started finding their way into collective  books, I gathered the courage to send my story manuscript to the Yol Akademi “First Story Book” competition. When they told me they were thinking of publishing my book, it was a huge surprise for me. I remember asking, “Are you sure?” many times.

Because I knew of authors who had knocked on every door for years to get their books published, it felt like a miracle that mine was being published on my first attempt. Of course, I would have liked my book to be published after a process where I went through all my stories one by one with an editor, perhaps even eliminating some, but when the publisher said, “It is a sufficiently mature book, we want to publish it as it is,” I realized I couldn't resist any longer and just went with the flow. 

Let's continue with the book's title. How and at what stage did you decide on the name 'İçim Dışım Sobe'?

The title of the book wasn't decided until two weeks before printing. I panicked and asked for help from my advertising friends, the students I had graduated, writer acquaintances, and the publisher's editor. Thankfully, they came up with very beautiful title alternatives. But since I thought I should be the one to name it, I put on my 'advertiser Serpil' hat.

In advertising, there are four stages to finding a big idea: research, connect the data, let it lie fallow, and catch the idea in an “aha!” moment. That's what I did.

First, I examined the titles of many storybooks. I looked to see if there was a common pattern in the titles of classic and popular storybooks. I read all my stories one last time and stopped thinking. I went to the pool and swam a lot. In the middle of the night, many names flooded my head. I immediately sat down at the keyboard and started writing. When I wrote “İçim Dışım Sobe,” I stopped. That was the “Aha! I found it!” moment. The next day, I shared it with the publisher's editor. 

The cover of 'İçim Dışım Sobe' is quite striking. It seems like there is a story there too. Could you elaborate a bit?

The publisher's graphic designer sent me a long questionnaire. It was aimed at understanding the spirit of the book and the residue the stories would leave on the reader. They also asked what style I liked in design. I answered everything. However, I didn't sit idle while waiting. I had artificial intelligence create the cover design I had in mind, which is the design you see on the cover now. It resonated with me so much that I asked them to use this image instead of the solutions coming from the publisher. Thankfully, they accepted.   

Did it challenge you to gather the common spirit of 25 stories into one visual? How did you guide the artificial intelligence?

It wasn't difficult at all. I used the symbols of the game 'Hide and Seek' (Saklambaç), which inspired the wordplay in 'İçim Dışım Sobe'. In the game, the seeker leans against something with their eyes covered by one hand and starts counting to a hundred; the girl on the book cover is doing the same. The idea of eyes being closed especially attracted me. Because eyes are a window that keeps a person very busy as they are in constant interaction with the outside world.

Whenever we close our eyes, we concentrate on what is inside, on memories, on what we remember, on our thoughts and feelings, on our subconscious—that is, our dark cave. Then we discover so much about ourselves that we, in a way, 'tag' (sobe) ourselves.

If we make this journey with sincerity, searching for our truth, we find the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, heaven and hell side by side, even intertwined. That is why insects and spiders are coming out along with magnificent flowers from the inner world that the girl in the visual has 'tagged'.   

'İçim Dışım Sobe' was released in February of this year and reached its second printing in a short time. We know that a storybook does not easily go into a second printing. As an unknown author, what do you attribute your success to?

I like to get feedback on my stories often. Although Jale Sancak, whom I value very much, once said, “I don't let anyone read anything I write, I don't ask how it is. If I am convinced it is good, that is enough.” If I become Jale Sancak one day, maybe I won't ask people for their opinions either. However, as a novice author whose first book has just been reprinted, I ask my readers at every opportunity what they like and what they don't like. “Fluid, engaging, gripping... Very vivid, as if I am watching what is happening on the spot...”

“It looks like easy-to-read stories, but it is multi-layered... It creates a need to think long and hard about the finished story instead of immediately moving on to the next one.” These are the answers I hear most often.

I think the reason the book went into a second printing lies in these answers. I think my stories have a structural style that is not too challenging for the new reader profile—who has a reduced attention span, cannot do without screens, and likes to browse through short content—but is not empty and makes them ask questions. 

As can be understood from the book's title, themes of confrontation, self-discovery, and revealing the hidden are generally dominant in your stories. Did you decide on these themes beforehand, or did the commonality emerge as the stories were written?

It was completely coincidental. I wrote all the stories in one year. And a year ago, I had promised myself to meet my shadow. I set out to explore not just the sides I show, but the ones I don't. I went through times when I accepted my unpleasant, repulsive sides. During that time, I read a lot of Jung and Adler. I think this confrontation I experienced with myself, my states of revealing what remained in the dark, took their share in my stories.  

Are the characters in your stories generally those who are stuck in their comfort zones, or those who show the courage to leave that comfort zone and 'tag' life? 

There are plenty of characters from both sides in my stories. Because I don't think it is very accurate to take a snapshot of someone and define or label them with their existential characteristics at that moment. I strongly believe in the possibility that someone stuck in a comfort zone can show a bravery that no one else can show years later and change their life from start to finish. These two opposing characters can take the wheel at different times of life, like the two pans of a scale. That is why I can say that I tried to write stories where both 'tag' themselves, stories that do not lose hope in humanity.  

In your story titled ‘Sayıklamayla Sıyırma Arasında’ (Between Delirium and Losing It), you wrote that a literature teacher directed the main character of the text toward writing. Is this a scene that bears traces of your own writing story? Is this how your adventure began?

I wish! I had invaluable literature teachers, but none of them left such an important impact on me. Actually, when I look back at the past today, I had poetry attempts and story works during my middle school and high school years. I used to read a lot of novels. I was fond of words. Thanks to Feyza Hepçilingirler's books, I loved Turkish very much. I remember very well a period when I didn't let go of Berna Moran's 'Turkish Novel: A Critical Look' trilogy. But I am a child of the generation that envied Özal's princes after the 80s. That's why I studied Business Administration like everyone else. Later, I tried to study International Relations. Being a plaza woman and working in cool offices were things that were highly glorified at that time. I followed that trend too. Also, I was a good speaker. I was reading a lot, but it must have been easier for me to share what I learned by speaking instead of writing. Because speaking is a performance where you can see the appreciation and applause as an immediate return. It is not as arduous as writing. 

When we look at your resume, creativity and the act of writing have always been your main job. Then why didn't you get involved in literature earlier?  Do you think you are late?

I think I wasted a lot of time with personal development nonsense. It shouldn't be surprising that a Generation X woman who studied business because everyone was studying business in the 80s got caught up in the personal development wind that was the fashion of the 2000s. That's why, even though I loved literature so much, I read books that I thought would help me improve myself more throughout my career. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to realize that literature does the same thing. In the meantime, choosing competitive professions, very long working hours, the rush to start a family, and many other things can be counted as reasons for my late meeting with literature. Am I late? I don't think I am. People my age are now considered middle-aged. The era of choosing a single profession and doing that job until the grave is long over. 

What does writing mean to you? 

A magnificent pastime created to develop one's ability to spend time with oneself. Sometimes I can work on a story for eight hours without ever leaving the desk. Moreover, while writing, I am dragged to places, situations, and moments I have never known. I learn new things. I feel like a leaf caught in the wind. As someone who gets bored very often in daily life, I have a lot of fun while writing. I often find myself surprised by what I write. I say things like, “Wow, how did I connect it here,” and so on. 

What are the elements that lead you to writing, that trigger you?

Situations, news, things I listen to, things I experience do not trigger me. Most of the time, when I sit at my computer, I don't have the slightest idea about what I will write. They say that a story, just like a novel, has a mathematics. As someone who is very good at mathematics, I don't understand story mathematics at all. I believe in intuition. My intuition tells me where to stop and where to start, how far to open up, and where to end. 

How do you construct a text? Do you start with the opening sentence, or do you know the final sentence and write in a way that reaches it?

I have written the stories I have written so far without knowing how they would end. If I said I construct the opening sentence in my head, I wouldn't be telling the truth. The only thing I know is that I need to write. I think I am one of those who believe in the muse. When I sit at the keyboard, my fingers just start moving somehow. 

You always soften heavy themes like suicide, betrayal, and loss with black humor. Is this a shield, or is it the only way to look at the truth for you?

I don't think it's either. I can call it the fear of losing the reader. In an age where toxic positivity is talked about, writing stories that hurt feels risky to me. Also, if you tell these with a very harsh, disturbing reality, you are doing something much riskier. As someone who is extremely convinced by Byung-Chul Han's definition of the palliative society and palliative  individual, I guess I feel a bit obligated to soften the heavy themes in my stories. I like to include the reader in the story, but I don't like to shake, batter, or slap them. That's why I think I coat them in a black humor sauce.

We develop an understanding even toward characters with very harsh realities while reading the stories. No character is completely black or white. Is this approach a conscious choice?

Do you really think so? Thank you very much. Facing my darkness on the journey of self-discovery taught me that what I said was not me, was also me. I started to find the statements “I would never do this, I would never say this, I would never fall into this situation” very adolescent. This, in turn, led me to try to understand even the most difficult characters. I had declared 2025 as my year to put the sentence “You are not the innocent of the sin you have not been tested with” into my daily practice. It seems these stories have also received their share of my state of mind. 

Mythology, crime, fantasy, magical realism, political... There are story attempts of every genre in your book. We can also mention that all the stories have a psychological background. Is designing your book this way a desire to show that you can write in every genre? 

Out of impudence. Metin Çalışkan, my editor with whom I am currently working for the second book, says, “The first book is the zero book. You pour out whatever you have accumulated inside.” I think mine is the same. 'İçim Dışım Sobe' became a storybook where I wrote whatever came to my mind without any filtering. I'm glad it did. There are quite a lot of people who say it is very colorful, rich in content, effective, and exciting. 

In 'Saat Yönünün Tersine' (Counter-Clockwise), the main character Dilay seems very brave and on a line outside our norms. Weren't you afraid of such a brave narrative?

Actually, we encounter much braver female characters in literature. Fosforlu Cevriye, Çalıkuşu Feride are the first ones that come to my mind. Dilay can be considered brave because she wants to be a war correspondent and is distant from marriage and motherhood. But on the other hand, she is a woman who sees herself as the cause of all the unhappiness and negativity her parents experienced, blames herself, and finds herself unsuccessful as a daughter.  In this respect, she is a quite classic woman. A character shaped by the culture of this geography. 

If I asked, is Dilay you?

There is a lot of me in her, but she is not me from start to finish. 

In your 'Aşk Olsun Türkan Şoray' (Love Be Damned, Türkan Şoray) story, you described Aysel's invisibility very strikingly. Is this the story of someone you observed, or is there a bit of Aysel in all of us? 

Aysel is a woman who does not like the character of Türkan Şoray in the movie 'Sultan' at all. She finds her very noisy, quarrelsome, and rebellious. Therefore, to glorify the silence and calmness that make her invisible, she tears apart a warrior-spirited, brave, capable, and very solid female character. Why am I telling this? Everyone who reads the story empathizes with Aysel. They hold their own invisibility accountable through her invisibility. Because in this society, women are raised by being convinced that being invisible is necessary for survival. Therefore, they miss Aysel's morbid hatred of Sultan and the hypocrisy underlying it. Aysel likes to play the victim and labels women who stand up to life as impudent, shameless, and insolent. I wanted to tell the distorted perception here, but most of my readers read by rote and felt sorry for Aysel. Actually, there is a bit of Aysel and a bit of Sultan in all of us. The choice of which one we want to be binds us, but it does not give us the right to lynch the other one we did not choose. Although this was the message of the story, due to cultural reading, most women made their reading from a place that glorified Aysel. 

Your story 'Bu Gençlik Nereye Gidiyor?' (Where Is This Youth Heading?) tells the issue through social interactions instead of individual relationships, unlike your other stories. What is the reason for this different preference?

Because, by its subject, it is a story that sticks a scalpel into a sociological phenomenon, not a psychological one. I wanted to focus on the reasons why young people are becoming atheists or deists instead of being religious in a country that is wanted to be turned into a moderate Islamic country. That's why I told the story of two young girls who set out on a journey to get to know the religion they belong to. I think the choice these two girls made at the end of the story, where I described their experiences through their visits to places of worship where the expectations of masculine energy are practiced as if they were the commands of Islam, explains everything. 

In 'İki Zaman, İki Baba, Bir Mektup' (Two Times, Two Fathers, One Letter), there is a story time spanning over a century; where did this idea of narration by letter come from?

Actually, the letter idea didn't come from me. The subject of the 2025 Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar Story Competition was to write a letter to a character of Tanpınar. I wrote a letter to İsmail Molla, who is the father of Behçet Bey in 'Mahur Beste'. At that time, I was thinking a lot about Orhan Pamuk's novel 'The Red-Haired Woman'. In the novel, Pamuk explains why fathers are the killers of their sons in Eastern literature, while sons kill their fathers in Western literature.  İsmail Molla is a completely Eastern father. He does not allow Behçet to separate from him, but he also complains a lot about this situation. The modern-day father, Çetin Bey, mirrors İsmail Molla very well with the letter he wrote. 

Then let's move on to the mother character in your 'Yalancı Cennet' (Lying Paradise) story immediately. Here, on the contrary, the mother is a very Western character. She is very far from the definition of a Turkish mother. One feels alienated. Doesn't this count as a risk?

Just as the father in 'Two Times, Two Letters' is a father in a traditional form that we are familiar with, the mother in 'Lying Paradise' is a mother we are just as foreign to and don't know very well. Yes, people may have difficulty understanding such a mother character, and indeed, I received some criticisms that this character could not be realistic. However, it should not be forgotten that just as there are very different climates in the Turkish mosaic, there are also very different female characters. I am not talking about class differences here. I am talking about differentiations over values, moral norms, and acceptances. Moreover, I didn't write this story so that a story would come out that breaks the rote memorization that 'a woman is maternal'. I generally don't write my stories with calculations like 'let me give such a message, let me break the tradition, let me make them question'. That's why I never thought I was taking a risk.

The two stories that impressed me the most were 'Kefen' (Shroud) and 'İntihar Paratoneri' (Suicide Lightning Rod). Heavy guilt is processed in both. Can we see these two stories as laments burned for children raised by being made to feel guilty?

I think we should. Children raised with guilt blame themselves when it suddenly rains on a sunny day when they become adults. I guess every storyteller inevitably burns a lament in one of their stories at some point for shoulders carrying such a heavy burden. By the way, they are two of my most difficult stories to read. They are relatively dark stories compared to the others. I'm glad you liked them. 

Which of your stories is the most loved among your readers? Is this story also your favorite story? 

I think 'Ben Ben Ben' (Me Me Me) is by far my most loved story. It is a story that asks the question 'Who are you?' to a person who has lost everything. It approaches the subject from a warm and honest place and gives its answers in the friendship of a twelve-year-old little child and a mentally unstable madman. I love this story too. However, my favorite story is 'İkiz Kapıların Bekçisi' (The Keeper of the Twin Doors). It is a story that gives a second chance to Gregor Samsa, who turned into a bug in Kafka's novel 'The Metamorphosis'. It is a story that makes the reader think about who the 'other' is. A fiction that says everyone is the 'other' in the wrong place.

Which of the 25 stories tired you the most while writing? Why?

'Bu Gençlik Nereye Gidiyor?' tired me quite a bit. I guess because I tried to be political without being politicized. Anything else? I can say 'Kan Kırmızı Ölüm' (Blood Red Death). Because it was my first detective attempt. And also 'Şehrin Hiç Haberi Olmadı!' (The City Never Knew!). Because it is semi-autobiographical. It hurt me while writing. 

When the reader closes the book, what question would you like them to be left with?

Could all of these be the same person? 

Your career is full of awards. When you won this story manuscript competition and held your first book in your hands, what did you feel differently than receiving the awards in your advertising and academic career?

My other awards were always awards won by collective creativity. That is, they were awards I received as a result of teamwork. However, this is a very personal, very solitary achievement. It is quite motivating that the worlds I built alone in a room, without receiving creative writing training or editor support, are appreciated.

We are generally used to getting that romantic “healing of the soul” or “pure artistic pleasure” answer from writers. Your describing your reason for writing as 'functionality' breaks the mold. What is functionality in writing for you?

I have been someone who has had a concern for being useful throughout my life. They say God does not love those who sit idle. I don't like it either. Producing labor wherever my strength, mind, energy, health, time, and talent allow, in short, being functional, is my life's mantra. Writing is my third career, after advertising and academia. I show the effort I can to do it properly. If it is useful, how happy for me. 

What is your next project? Have you started your second book?

Yes, I have started. And I have made quite a bit of progress. But this time I am going more calmly. More consciously. 

Would you like to say one last thing?

I thank everyone who patiently read the interview to the end. I would be very happy if those who were curious and bought and read my book reach me from my Instagram account @serpilelim and share their comments with me.