1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive is my first book of stories and to say it’s
been a long time coming may be an understatement. I’ve been writing stories
since abandoning my dream of becoming a professional actor/sketch comic and
then moving to the UK with a dude I just met (we’re still together). I turned a
few sketches into stories and thought, when I get back to Canada, I’m going to
become a celebrated author. My first story was published in 2019.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
In my undergrad and MFA – I went to university when I was 38 – I focused on poetry because I loved it growing up (my dad loved it) and I thought if I could home in on language and the lyricism and beauty of it, I might be a better short story writer. I’d love to be a poet because poetry has the power to press pause on my life, but I don’t know if I have the talent.
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?
When I write short stories, they usually come out in a few hours. Then I sit inside one of two thoughts: 1) that was a stroke of literary genius or 2) well that’s five hours of your life you can’t get back. Regardless, I don’t read it again for a couple of weeks. When I open the file, I revise as I go and let it sit again for a few days. When I go back the next time, I’ve usually thought about the original idea, what I’d hoped to do and how it’s ended up. Sometimes it is some kind of literary magic, and other times it’s like watching a pair of sunglasses fall into the lake.
I
consider the idea-making part of my process and this is constant. When I’m
driving long distances, which I do often, when I go for a walk, or when I’m in
the middle of a conversation, I might say to my husband, text me this: palm
reader con artist can’t see the grief carving out a hole between the head and
the heart lines. This character sat in my head for months before the story
came to be (not literary genius), then I revised it about ten times and started
sending it out. It found a home and comes out in May.
For
novels (I have five of them), it depends. The one that comes out in 2027 (or
2028) took me ten years to write. It’s a complicated character-driven story
that explores disability activism, facial and body difference, and a mother’s
deep love and fear for her daughter born with a facial difference. My MFA
thesis will never see the light of day; I wrote a romance one summer; I wrote a
mystery set up north (that I actually think I’ll return to) and a time-travel
novella (where I put all my feelings about losing my dad) was accepted a couple
of months ago, but I’m holding off publishing it because of timing with the
novel. And I am currently writing a novel about a massage therapist, that is
(in a speculative way) semi-autobiographical (at least that’s what my mum
thinks).
The
easier (and shorter) answer to this question is that I am writing all the time
and depending on my brain, other commitments and self-imposed deadlines, I’m
either writing a story or revising a novel. I’m doing the latter right now.
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?
If all my dreams come true, there will be a short story renaissance in Canada and for the rest of my life I will be able to write weird, dark and totally unhinged short stories, and if that’s the case I’ll wake up every single day and write a new wackadoodle version of this unreal life for readers to parse: does she want me to like this character or hate them? The answer will always be neither. I always want you to harness your empathy, sympathy or your basic humanity and find a reason for that character to exist just as they are.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are
you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Nope. Nope. Nope. Ironic, since I run a reading series and absolutely love listening to authors read from their work, but when I read my own, I stand outside myself and analyse the whole scene like the worst theatre critic you can imagine: who does this person think she is, nobody wants to hear this garbage spoken aloud, holy shit has it been five minutes yet, because who decided reading this section out loud was a good idea, and sit down lady, sit the hell down.
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?
Unconsciously, I put together a collection of nineteen stories, from a pile of maybe fifty publishable pieces, that have good characters doing bad things and bad things happening to good characters. I didn’t know the stories were filled with people struggling to survive and I hadn’t even thought about how many of them contained water, swimming and that they explored the ease with which some people live in this world as it is (like it's as easy as breathing) until an editor read them.
It
isn’t a novel idea. But for the most part, I want the world to be a more
empathetic and sympathetic place. I had a father who, on paper, I should have
hated, but I didn’t. Despite the childhood abuse, the casual insulting ways he
scrutinised me as an adult, and that I never heard the words I love you
(even though I pleaded with him to say it, or at the very least say it to my
brother weeks before he died) I know that he loved me, and I loved him. His
life was bombed out when he was a year old and he spent his entire life trying
to climb out of the crater.
Mostly,
I think (certainly with the novels) that people are never just one thing.
Malevolence isn’t something that can exist in and of itself, benevolence
doesn’t exist as pure altruism, and empathy and sympathy shouldn’t be
impossible goals.
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?
Unlike
some conversations that happened around the film festival in Berlin and Wim
Wenders’ assertion that artists “have
to do the work of people, not the work of politicians” and despite Nick Cave’s
very narrowed response, I do believe him when he says art is “something we approach with awe
and wonder, that humbles us whilst also enlarging our hearts, that works its
way into our souls and spirits, guiding us towards what is good, beautiful, and
true.”
In a world where we have freedom-of-speech-for-some, and people like Cave get angry because the Adelaide Writers’ Festival is “vaporised in a mushroom cloud of cowardice, performative outrage, self-righteous posturing, cancellations, counter-cancellations, mob trots and general narcissistic silliness” but not angry when a Palestinian author is cancelled, it seems only some of us are actually outraged at the current state of the world. When the author’s freedom-to-speak is deemed too risky for the event organizers, doing the right thing is left to the artists, and clearly people like Nick Cave (upsetting because I like him) doesn’t believe artists should stand up for anyone but themselves, that we should leave the politics for the politicians, shut up and write. Well, I say fuck that. I cannot stay silent while arts leaders, administrators and politicians are incapable of doing the right thing because we’re on the brink of a global fascist takeover where the only speech not silenced is the polite smiling complicity of those who only care about themselves and money.
This
is art in a capitalistic system, I guess, with financial incentives, political
implications and the silencing of some voices. Artists have been sucked
into it, and the choice is to be politicians or silent witnesses. In a
capitalistic prize-driven culture that only values art when it wins something,
when it’s longlisted, shortlisted or honourably mentioned, artists are catering
their work to fit, to be accepted or to win – that is also a political
decision. So, if we all decide to participate in this system, then we must ask
ourselves, are we comfortable not knowing where and how that money is made?
What is your art worth if humans die to reward it, if protestors are punished
trying to make it better, and if other artists are hurt, excluded or blacklisted
because the moneyed keep saying, do it our way or you don’t do it at all?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
I have always been in a workshop of some kind and have always been open to
the idea that my writing can be better with an objective view of it. I loved
working with an editor.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to
you directly)?
Don’t rush it. Writers send stories out before they’re ready; they query
agents and publishers with unprepared drafts, and they rush the ending because
they just want it done and out in the world, and I think some even hope that a
publisher will see what they tried to do and help them achieve it,
rather than putting in the work to DO what they need to do before
sending it out. A writer once shared the timeline of a published novel (8
years) and then said if they’d focused on the writing, revision, workshopping,
beta readers and research at the start instead of after all the rejections,
they probably would have gotten it published sooner.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?
I love short stories and would write them for the rest of my life if I could, but a novel is an entire world unfolding in front of me, so I love them too. I don’t find it hard to move between stories and the novel, mainly because they’re doing different things and I feel the difference the moment I enter a story.
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?
Because I have reading deadlines, I usually work around that schedule. For example, if I have a Junction Reads and a few other interviews, I put those books into the calendar and write around them. I usually sit down by 8:00am and then I take the dogs for a walk around 4:00pm, but this isn’t an unmoveable routine. I live in a multi-generational home so if I look outside and see my 84-year-old mum trying to move a heavy rock or climb a ladder to take down the birdhouse, I don’t just sit here staring out my window.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for
(for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Books. Always books. I have favourite short story writers whose books I love. Elaine McCluskey’s Rafael Has Pretty Eyes came to me at the perfect time. I needed to read a character-driven collection that showed the funny, vulnerable and devastating reality for some people. Carleigh Baker is literally inside my mind sometimes with the ways she writes women, and of course Anuja Varghese, Kim Fu, Téa Mutonji, Lindsay Wong, Cary Fagan, Damian Tarnopolsky, the list is endless and I have to stop because if I keep going people will wonder, why I didn’t mention their book, so I’ll just say if you’re s short story writer in Canada there’s a pretty good chance I read your book, so thanks!
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Apricots. I grew up in St. Catharines and down the street from our house this guy had a farm that he refused to sell to a developer, so on the border of my little subdivision we climbed trees and made ourselves sick on unripe apricots. I don’t eat them now, but when I smell an apricot that’s where it takes me.
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?
Music. My MFA thesis was written listening to Natalie Merchant’s Ophelia after my main character came alive listening to the titular song, over and over and over. When in the car on long drives, the music is blasting, the mind is blowing around all the ideas.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
Family is everything to me, so my siblings and my mum exist in any free second, I’m not thinking about writing or the writing community. I have a handful of very close writer friends and because of some serious trust issues have many other literary friends who I mostly think are just being polite. But I’d be nowhere and nothing without the literary community I’ve built for myself – and hopefully for others.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a collection of poetry. Know anybody who’d want to read some weird dark poetry?
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?
If we had money growing up, I would have gone to university after high school and become a lawyer, and now I’d probably still be living in poverty fighting for prison abolition and/or doing pro bono work for people who protest arts awards funded by big banks trying to art-wash their dirty money.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I have been dreaming up worlds in which to escape since I was a kid. If I’d known this was open to me, if my dad had given me a pen and paper instead of bookmarking stanzas to memorise in an anthology of dead poets, I may have done this sooner. This was always in me, it just didn’t feel like it could be for me.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great
film?
Last great book is hands down, Saeed Teebi’s You Cannot Kill Our Imagination. As a white woman sitting in my small, privileged world, I weep when I consider all the artists whose words and creativity have been wiped off the face of the earth.
Last
great film is Hamnet probably. Predictable, maybe. But we watch series
usually and just finished Detective Hole, which was co-created by Jo
Nesbo, which is probably why they did such a great job on it.
20 - What are you currently working on?
The massage auto-biographical novel…lol. I’m currently changing it from past to present tense and then sending it to someone to see if it is structurally sound. Then I work on a final close edit of Dreams of the Weary before sending it to the publisher for their edits. Also, a collection of short stories with people who commit little crimes, or do bad shit, because they can’t spend too much time looking at their own sadness (it’s going to be much funnier than Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive.)
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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