12 or 20 (second series) questions with Daniel Goodwin

Daniel Goodwin is the author of two previous novels – Sons and Fathers and The Art of Being Lewis – and the award-winning poetry collection Catullus’s Soldiers. His new novel The Great Goldbergs is being published in September 2023. He lives in Ottawa with his wife Kara and their lovely, rambunctious children.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book proved that I could write a novel. My new book is, I hope, better, in the sense that it’s deeper and more resonant and more skilled, but it shares some similarities to my first and second books. All three are set in Montreal, take boys from childhood to middle age, and are about male friendship and relationships between fathers and sons. Most of all, like all my novels, the new one is about becoming who you are, or being true to yourself. It feels different in that I’m going in knowing that the most important part of writing a book is not what comes after it’s published but the journey that’s come before.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I wrote – or dictated – my first poem when I was two. I was lying on my mother’s lap, we were somewhere above the Atlantic flying back from a family summer in Greece. I apparently recited a poem I made up and my mother wrote it down. It went like this: “Stars are in the night / And snow is on top of the buildings / And between the pillars of Parthenon. / And sometimes it comes down in big balls / And lands on the ground.” Sometimes I think it’s my best poem! Greece obviously made an impression on me.

Poetry was all around me growing up. Many of my parents’ friends were writers – mostly poets – or visual artists. Nobody seems to have heard of him anymore, but Irving Layton was a great uncle who was very close friends with his nephew, my father. Poetry felt natural from the beginning.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

My writing comes both quickly and slow. It takes months to start. First drafts are very rough. I usually start with a page or a chapter built around a character in a tough situation. Then lots of notes. Then writing bits and pieces interspersed with lots of notes. It took me a while to be comfortable with the idea that making notes, writing down questions, writing snippets, reading what I’d written the day or week before, revising, and so on, all qualified as writing. That was a revelation for me.

It takes me a long time to figure out what I’m really writing about. I’ve tried being one of those writers who does a great outline and knows exactly what he or she is setting out to do. But it kills the spark of the thing for me. I also have to rewrite. A lot. If I start thinking about trying to write a perfect or close-to-perfect sentence or paragraph or page the first time around, it’s paralyzing. I have to spit it out as fast as I can type it, not worrying about spelling or grammar or sentence structure or even always the right word.

Then I go back and revise many times. The whole process for me is like an oyster covering that grain of sand with nacre, the same substance that goes into making its shell, its home and protection, until it has a pearl to show for it.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

It’s a cliché as most sports analogies are, but writing a poem for me is like a hundred-yard dash. I sit down and fifteen minutes later I have a first draft. I can put it away and come back to it later and refine it. Writing a novel is like running a series of marathons every day for three or four years. It’s a brutal, exhausting process. Fun of course, too.

Whenever I write a novel, I know I’m writing a book. I’ve tried writing short stories but have never had one published. I assume because they’re not very good. But my novel writing is never linear. In the early days, I started a novel and got stuck on a chapter for months. I just didn’t know what came next. As I began to get better at it and understand myself and my process, I realized I could write novels the way movies are filmed: out of sequence. Sometimes I’ll write the last line first, or the middle chapter second, or the first line last. And so on. Each day I work on what I’m passionate about.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I don’t mind public speaking but really hate doing readings although I know I should feel more positive about them. But I feel so self-conscious reading my own stuff. I’ve gotten to the point where I like talking about my book and other books in relation to it, about its themes, and even my process or journey as a writer, but I usually stay away from reading directly from my work. I don’t know why this is. It might have to do with the fact I think writing and reading is such a solitary, intimate act, it feels strange to be doing it up in front of a crowd, even if that crowd is just a small group of people.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

My poetry is about many things, often art, often relationships with my parents, my wife, my children. And the usual clichés: love and death.

In my fiction I am always trying to explore one theme: how you become yourself. How you resist all the fears and temptation – money, power, wanting to belong – and how you break free of all your constraints – your upbringing, your past, your character – to become who you are, as Nietzsche says, and pursue your truth. This might not be the most interesting question to everyone but it is to me.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I think writing – and reading for that matter – are two of the most important and rebellious acts in this culture that is too occupied with speed, technology, materialism, and everything that is trivial and superficial. Writing, like all real art, plays many roles. It bears witness. It brings pleasure. But most importantly, art reminds us that human beings are not a means to an end – as may organizations and governments would have us believe. We are an end in ourselves.

As our culture moves through a dark period, even with all the flashing screens, real writing becomes more important than ever before.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Always essential, difficult at first, now just essential and pleasurable. I’m very fortunate to have a superb editor in Marc Côté at Cormorant Books. He has taught me a lot. A good editor is like a very skilled reader who knows how to write. You always learn so much about your writing from good readers and editors.

Marc once described the role of the editor to me as being like a midwife: there at the delivery but not at the conception.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Hands down, it’s Somerset Maugham’s quip: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

This gets at the essentially creative, original, and individualistic nature of art. It also gets at the fact you are always in undiscovered country. There are no paths to take. You’re literally making it up as you go along.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

It’s getting harder as I get older. One of the best compliments someone ever paid me was that my fiction was like poetry and my poetry was like fiction. I started off as a poet and it came naturally to me. I had to teach myself how to write fiction. But the funny thing is, I realized I was more suited to fiction because as I went along, I started to become more conscious of what I was doing and so was able to get better. Whereas poetry just came. I still have trouble knowing which poems of mine are good vs. not so good.

Increasingly, I can only write poems if I’m very moved to. I wrote one about the death of my mother last year. It’s one of my favourite poems. But fortunately (or unfortunately if you’re a poet) you don’t lose a mother every week. It’s taken me a while, but I have come to the conclusion that the way I can best express myself is in fiction.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I wake up, meditate for about ten minutes, then I write. As noted above, writing for me can involve many things. Then I walk, come back home and shower, and go to work. I can only do the really heavy lifting, the making up of stuff, in the morning when my mind is clear and fresh, and I haven’t become stressed or tired from the day. I almost never write outside the morning.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I walk. I relax. I read. I try not to worry about it. I remind myself I’ve done it before, I will do it again, that this too shall pass.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Chicken soup reminds me of my childhood home. The smell of my wife’s skin reminds me of my adult home.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I’ve written a few poems describing paintings. I think they are called ekphrastic poems. I find nature absolutely essential to my happiness and creative life although I rarely write about it. McFadden is obviously right in the sense that good books carry echoes of many other good books. But for me, books come less out of books and more out of life. Experience.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Mordecai Richler. Kazuo Ishiguro. John le Carré. Churchill. Auden. The Old Testament. Shakespeare. Well-written mysteries.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’m not sure. I’m either very content or unambitious! I guess I’d like to keep doing more of what I’ve already done. Spending time with my family. Writing. Living. Understanding. Paying homage.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I don’t know. I do have another occupation. I think that unless you’re writing unabashedly commercial fiction, you don’t choose to be a writer. You just do it. It’s not a conscious choice. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I write to understand. I want to understand myself and others and the world. I want to pay homage to that understanding. I can only ever truly understand something by writing about it.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I recently read Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, about the US conflict that claimed 600,000 lives. I never get tired of reading about Lincoln bringing his moral stature, courage, political instincts, thoughtfulness, and oratory to bear on combatting the evil of slavery.

As for films, it wasn’t a great film in the conventional understanding of the term, but I enjoyed The Lost King, the recent feature film about the improbable search by an amateur archaeologist for the mortal remains of Richard III and the rehabilitation of his eternal reputation. I saw it at the lovely ByTowne Cinema here in Ottawa with my wife and our two children who are still at home. I think I liked the film so much because books featured so heavily in its story. I like it when books have roles in movies.

20 - What are you currently working on?

My new novel. A very loose updating of the Adam and Eve story.

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