1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I think a lot of writers would agree that having a debut book out lends more legitimacy to your small talk. I can answer the question, “So, what do you do?” with a little less sheepish hemming-and-hawing now!
Before writing The Pugilist and the Sailor, I wrote flash fiction and short stories. The through line, thematically, is that my characters all tend to be in limbo and are daydreaming their way to some concrete action or decision. The novel feels different because it’s told across different time periods and through an ensemble cast, so I was able to expand the breadth and depth of many characters, which I have learned is my favourite approach at the moment.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I started out by writing poetry as a teenager but let it go in favour of fiction as a young adult. Fiction gave me that room for character development, which is what drives my writing. Flash fiction became a natural place to move to after poetry, but having written a novel now I definitely want to write another.
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?
I am a slow writer. The first thing I do is buy a spiral bound notebook from the dollar store. It is very important that this is not a beautiful, hardcover journal. I spend a lot of time before writing letting a vibe percolate in my mind, and there are a lot of notes at this point. Characters come to me quickly, along with the emotional frequency I’m trying to capture, but plot (and what’s at stake) takes me much longer to figure out. Once I build up enough of the world, the writing does start to come faster. I edit a lot as I go; I do so much fiddling at the line level every time I open my Word doc as a way to figure out the world, which is, actually, why I’m so slow to make progress. I continuously rake over passages, but then many draft scenes will appear in tact by the final version. In my novel, what changed most drastically in the final version was its structure.
4 - Where does a work of prose 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?
This novel was my thesis project, so I knew from the outset I was writing a “book” but coming from flash fiction I approached writing it as though I was writing a series of flash, and the early structure felt like I had a bunch of building blocks to move around. Later I had to work on building in the connective tissue and re-organizing all of my blocks to make the telling of the story more coherent and less disjointed.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy doing readings because I like preparing for them. Something about having to present my work forces to me to get my thoughts together about that particular passage as it relates to the whole project.
When I’m editing I do a pass where I read the whole thing out loud (well, generally, loud whispering to myself if everyone else is home). That is very helpful because I have a tendency to write long, meandering sentences, with endless qualifiers, so my ears and breath help where using just my eyes can’t.
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?
I think my writing is emotional, and what drives a piece is usually trying to get at the core of why some elusive feeling feels the way it does. Currently, I’m starting a new project that is examining unconscious patterns of behaviours and experiences that repeat unconsciously down a family line, and so I’m interested in a kind of emotional-psychological-psychic genetic inheritance.
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 what writers do is offer a place to access and exercise empathy and introspection. I think that writers offer complexity and diversity to our thinking and understanding. And that writing offers a way to stretch our attention spans again. I think the writer can access authenticity in a way that is passed on to readers, so the truth of a feeling, experience, expression or intellectual curiosity is up for consideration and analysis. Whether writing is a mirror or a window, the writer can be one (of many) saying ‘look here,’ ‘and here,’ and ‘over here.’
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I really love working with an editor. Writing is a necessarily collaborative pursuit, regardless of all the time you spend alone doing it. It’s so essential for a piece to have those second, third, forth pair of careful eyes on it. An editor asks important questions about the work and your intentions, which is the only way a story can become the best version of itself.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve used (directly) is to ground writing through the body by using sensory descriptions. Slowing a scene down to some of the granular details of what the character is feeling in their body at that moment becomes the point of entry for your reader to step into the character’s shoes and relate to the character, and your story, more fully.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (flash fiction to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
Moving between flash and the novel feels relatively easy—it’s a matter of scale. The appeal for me in writing longer work is in taking a fragment and then figuring out how to widen the view to take into account the context that fragment got broken away from. I like the digging around, but, at the same time, that is the challenge for me; I’m slow to write so I like the brevity of flash, whereas a novel is a different kind of commitment.
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 don’t have a set writing routine at the moment but steal twenty minutes here-and-there to write. I have a son in grade three so mornings are spent getting ready for school. On the most ideal day I wake up at 5:00 am and meditate and then write a bit before anyone else is up. I can do this consistently when I have a deadline, but more often than not, I barely register that I’ve turned off that 5:00 am alarm and rolled over. It is with a great deal of optimism that I still set that alarm every day though!
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
There was one specific moment when I stalled out while writing The Pugilist and the Sailor, after having been on a roll. It was super frustrating and I was starting to think that maybe I didn’t really have the chops to write this thing. After about two weeks of not being able to get anything down, it occurred to me that all of my main characters were stalled in the novel—two were laid up in a hospital bed, and one was in bed torn up with grief. When I realized that we all just had to get out of bed, I was inspired again. I jumped ahead to a point when the characters were more active and kept going.
More generally, other books and shows help me get out of a rut. I’m inspired seeing how other people create something and I get really excited to read or see something executed masterfully. Creativity is contagious, I think.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a really weak sense of smell. And also a pretty bad memory. I am certain the two are related. Recently I made a pact with another nose-blind writer friend that we were going to make an effort to pay more attention to fragrances through the day, in order to use more scent descriptions in our writing, and essentially take that advice from above.
But I will say that the smell of fresh cut grass takes me back to being a kid, and specifically to the feeling of having a whole day ahead of me without any obligations.
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 definitely agree with that sentiment but in The Pugilist and the Sailor, there is a lot of time given to characters who are knitting and sewing. I love to do both and love the connections between text and textiles: strands that are woven, or unraveling, a gesture toward something tender and tactile.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
The work of my friends and peers is important to me—Jess Taylor, Sofia Mostaghimi, Andrew Battershill, Menaka Raman-Wilms, Daniel Perry—I’m really proud and inspired by the talented people I know and have met. I’m also trying to read more and more poetry because it’s a vital and essential form.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I’m thinking of trying my hand at poetry again! I do feel intimidated by it though. Also I’d like to write a play.
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?
After high school I wanted to be a Literature professor. At this point, however, another occupation I’d like to attempt is making greeting cards. If I’m no longer a writer, then I’ll gladly leave the insides of the cards blank.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was in grad school studying Comparative Literature and I remember sitting in windowless seminar room realizing that I wanted to try to write a novel and not only analyze them. I loved to read as a kid, and it wasn’t until I was a teen that I realized I loved to write as well. I feel really energized after I write; if I get one of those twenty-minute stolen sessions in, I feel buoyant through the rest of the day.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I was really moved by Denison Avenue, by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. I love the visual component of that book. The last movie that I was wholly absorbed by was Anatomy of a Fall.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m in the very early—dollar store notebook phase—of a story about a Guyanese family in suburbia during the 80s where ancestral behaviours and events are unconsciously being repeated. I’m at the stage where I’m getting to know a rowdy cast of characters!
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