12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tamas Dobozy

TAMAS DOBOZY was born in Nanaimo, BC. After receiving his Ph.D. in English from the University of British Columbia, he taught at Memorial University. His work has been published in journals throughout North America, and in 1995 he won the annual subTerrain short fiction contest. When X Equals Marylou, his first collection of short fiction, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award. His Siege 13 was winner of the 2012 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Fiction. Tamas Dobozy now teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

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 was a mistake. It made me aware of what was at stake in writing. The company went bankrupt, so I'm safe. No one will ever put that book out again. I think this recent work is stylistically an extension of "Last Notes and Other Stories" but also a departure into a lot of 3rd person writing, so in that regard a return to the book before that, When X Equals Marylou. It's the first time I've tried to put together a book of stories that has a cohesive subject matter, so in that way it's different.

2 - How did you come to short fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I started as a poet, actually, but sucked at it. So I turned to short fiction because novels take too long to write, and I get bored. A short story is like a poem in a way, highly compressed, except that it has a plot (or at least mine do).

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?
Sometimes it's fast, sometimes slow. This time around it took me seven years to put together the book. I guess that's slow, though it didn't feel that way to me at the time. Sometimes stories come whipping off my fingers, sometimes they are an agony of snail's pacing. "Rosewood Queens" took 27 drafts, and I'm not talking proofer's drafts, where you're changing the "the's" to "a's," but serious ground-up rewriting each time. It eventually turned into two stories, "Rosewood Queens" and "Old Water." I make lots of notes, go back and delete stuff, shift things around. It's a terrible process. I hate it. But there's no other way.

4 - Where does a story 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?
Lately stories begin with a title or first line. I usually write discrete stuff, and publish more of it in journals than eventually come together in a book. I love publishing in journals more than anywhere else. I take breaks from the "big book" and work on discrete stuff as it comes to me. It's pretty random, though the final book is a very carefully shaped object.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like the travel, but I'm not a big fan of readings. But at least readings are easy. What I really hate are giving lectures. They take so much time to write up and organize, and I have so little time already. I'd rather be working on my own fiction. I've decided not to do them anymore unless I'm offered so much money I can't say no, and who in his right mind would offer me that kind of money anyhow?

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 like Benjamin, Agamben, Blanchot, De Certeau. Those are theorists I read a lot of. But when I'm writing a story the main questions are just, "How am I possibly going to make sense of all this stuff? How is this going to end? When can I move on to something else?" The questions are all issues of problem solving, very practical, even pedestrian. There's very little magic. I don't know what the current questions are in general, but my own all revolve around how awful human beings are, and why can't they be made a little better.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Other writers can do whatever they want. I have no prescription for them. It's their business. I like to attack certain kinds of truths or certainties and demonstrate how they're never absolute, and how uncertainty is really the best position to assume in almost all instances. That's a political, cultural and epistemological project. I also really like to entertain readers, make them interested in how a story is going to turn out. Entertainment above all else, I say, but of course there's entertainment and then there's entertainment.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I have always liked working with editors, and been lucky to have worked with some good ones.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
"You will never make any money at this." This is a liberating statement; there's no money in writing, so you get to do whatever you like. How many other occupations offer such liberty?

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?
I do critical prose for my job. If it wasn't required by the university I'd never write another scholarly essay in my life. It's a totally different thing. You drop the quarter in, the machine moves across the page, out pops a critical piece. Stories are totally different, not mechanical at all, susceptible to the vagaries of accident, weather, mood, etc. I can force out a scholarly piece no problem; but I can't force out a story, no matter how I try.

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?
If I get an hour a day I'm lucky. No routine. I write wherever and whenever I get a break. A typical day for me begins with dragging four kids out of bed to get to school, and then a pile of committee meetings at the university, and then a big glass of Redbreast at night to get me to sleep.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Self-flagellation, usually. I just keep attacking the page until I get a breakthrough, or I throw the whole thing away and start something new. There is no such thing as inspiration. It's all just work. Sometimes you think you've been inspired, and then you realize it's just the announcement of a big job that needs to get done.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
The sea.

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 is a big part of my life, and my working life as a writer, mainly jazz and classical. I used to love Pop music, but it bores me very quickly now; it doesn't present enough information. Two weeks of listening and the CD's ready for the garbage. Maybe that's the point of Pop Culture, instant recycling, I don't know. I also love visual art and spend a fair bit of time looking through it.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I like Alvaro Mutis, Mavis Gallant, Eudora Welty, Kenzaburo Oe, Mikhail Bulgakov, Claudio Magris. Those are the big ones. There is no distinction between the work and the life in that regard.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
It would be great to learn to skate very well. I'd love to be able to do that.

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 would love to be an electrician, something that's definite, hands-on, that at the end of the day produces something of actual effect in the world. If I hadn't been a writer I'd probably be a scholar, which I am anyhow. I was no good at dealing with the material world.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
It was the only thing I loved unequivocally.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I can't remember the book, there's so many. I loved The Changeling by Oe. The last great film was just a few nights ago: Insignificance by Roeg. Marilyn Monroe explains relativity to Einstein. Fantastic.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Just stories, really. A bigger project hasn't yet fully emerged. The story I'm working on right now is called "Ileo." I may have to throw it away. At this point it would be a relief.

[Tamas Dobozy reads in Ottawa as part of the ottawa international writers festival on April 26 and again on April 27]

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Brian Fawcett, Human happiness

This woman is Rita Joan Fawcett, then Rita Surry. She worked as a cashier in the meat department of the Hudson’s Bay store in downtown Edmonton. She was a dance club queen, and girl-about-town. It is 1933, and she is 23 years old, about to meet Duncan Hartley Fawcett, the man she will marry in 1936.

She’s a big-boned girl, buxom, pretty without quite being beautiful, but healthy and very well-groomed, always. Those are silk stockings on her legs, the watch on her left wrist will last 40 years, her manicure is impeccable but not ostentatious, and the necklace—are they real pearls?—is tasteful.

Her best asset is her smile, which could still light up rooms when she was 90, and made her friends all her life without making her seem goofy or an easy mark. Behind it was a quick and an encompassing sense of humour that didn’t require malice or schadenfreude to fire it up, and which masked her native shrewdness. There are no photographs of her in which she looks like a deer in the headlights, and I never saw her in real life that way. Her weakness was that she couldn’t see things coming. She only saw people coming, about whom she often made snap judgments that were rarely off the mark—and nearly always final. She kept her feet on the ground her entire life, and taught the skill to her children. This was no small accomplishment, given their very different characters.

Nearly a decade in the making is award-winning Toronto writer Brian Fawcett’s courageous memoir of his late parents, Human happiness (Toronto ON: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2011). For years a journalist and public intellectual,Fawcett has been taking on big subjects through non-fiction, from his Cambodia:A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow (1986), Gender Wars: A Noveland Some Conversation About Sex and Gender (1993) and Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are In My Hometown (2003), to Robin Blaser (with Stan Persky; 2010) [see my review of such here]. His subjects have been large and small, and in this new book, the subject is his own parents, their marriage and the family they created. This is perhaps the largest and most difficult of subject matters, and Fawcett manages it with stark honesty, attention and humour, without a speck of sentimentality.

It is a difficult thing to turn one’s gaze upon the speculations of one’s own house, one’s own life, and Fawcett does it with alarming and straightforward skill. Human happiness is a warm, direct, honest exploration and heartfelt portrait of a couple existing of their own place, their own time. Over the years, his non-fiction works have concerned themselves with political and social histories, with calling out those who required it (otherwise known as a low tolerance for bullshit), and he approaches his parents’ history in much the same way. How does one comprehend their own parents honestly, and the contexts through which they became who they were?

As the title attests, this is a book about happiness, after all; about how it is sought after, discovered, and even about how it is perceived, amid the arguments, the long stubborn stretches and the misunderstandings (Fawcett’s scene of he and his brother in their father’s office as their father entirely misreads his two sons is astounding).

If attention might be called the highest form of respect, and even the highest complement, in Human happiness, Brian Fawcett has given his all. 

There’s something else that makes all this worth the telling: the two central figures in this story literally couldn’t have imagined that a story could be written about their lives. They both had the sort of modesty of expectation that prevented them from seeing themselves as central to anything, even, at times, their own lives. They didn’t see their marriage as drama, or their lives as a narrative that had a fireworks-and-orchestra beginning followed by plot-point catastrophes and epiphanies, and they didn’t see its ending coming until it was on them even thought they both prepared for death in exquisite detail. They saw their individual lives and their marriage through the lens of a plan, one that they pursued relentlessly without talking about it very much, and except in moments they thought of as weakness, without looking back to see what had worked and what hadn’t.

This is also about the desire to find a human and humane happiness, about the goodness of the human spirit, about the unappreciated comedy of our expectations and it is about the will we don’t hear very much about these days. Not the will to dominate others, or make life about ourselves, but the often-interrupted will to love and be loved, and the contagious decency that arises from it.

My private moments? Like most people born in North America during and just after the Second World War, I grew up without the faintest curiosity about the people who’d brought me into the world, and even less about the ancestors who had gotten them to our staging grounds. Toward the end of my parents’ lives I began to understand that this lack of curiosity was a serious mistake, and in part, this book is my attempt at restitution: this is about them, but it is also for them.

[BrianFawcett launches Human happiness in Ottawa on Monday, April 30, 2012 as part of the ottawa international writers festival]

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan has degrees in Writing from the University of Victoria (BA) and Johns Hopkins University (MA). Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, and Revival: An Anthology of Black Canadian Writing (2006). Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was published internationally. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, was a More Book Lust selection, and was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004’s Books to Remember. Her second novel, Half-Blood Blues, appeared in Canada with Thomas Allen, and has been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

Edugyan has held fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (US), Hawthornden Castle (Scotland), Klaustrid (Iceland), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), and most recently JAK/Collegium Budapest (Hungary). She has taught creative writing at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria, and has sat on panels as diverse as the LesART Literary Festival in Esslingen, Germany, the Budapest Book Fair in Hungary, and Barnard College in New York City. She currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

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

The first book I guess vindicated the long years of writing that stretched out before it. You think, ‘Okay, I can do this,’ even while understanding (hoping) that this is just the beginning of a lifelong pursuit. My recent novel shares, I think, an interest in histories that have slipped from view – in the first novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, I wrote about a town in Alberta founded by freed black slaves, whereas this new novel explores the experiences of black Germans under the Third Reich (among other things).

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

Actually, I started with poetry. But narrative drive and character kept taking over.

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?

It depends. Some things come quickly, a gift, fully formed. Others retain virtually no connection to the initial idea or draft. But most of the writing is rewriting, always.

4 - Where does a novel 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?

I’m very conscious when I start a piece of what it will be, whether a novel or a short story, etc. Certain stories seem to dictate certain lengths. I also tend to write chronologically.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I’m rather shy and reluctant in public. But I do enjoy meeting fellow writers, and readers, and hearing their thoughts and ideas. So, a bit of both I guess.

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’m not sure about theoretical. I suppose I’m unfashionable in that I try to avoid fashions or ‘current’ questions. The right kinds of questions – questions about the human condition, about who we are, what we want, how to live, what is the moral life – these seem to me either always current, or never so. But nevertheless these are the sorts of concerns that tend to occupy me. That said, my fiction seems much more interested in its characters and their particulars, rather than larger themes or authorial concerns. I guess in the end my fiction tends towards the stance that we are not so different from how we were centuries ago – that there is more similarity in the human condition, than difference.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

This isn’t the sort of question writers should be answering – at least not in their role as writers. I do believe the best fiction is more than just entertainment, more than mere storytelling. But everything beyond that point remains vague, and maybe it should stay that way. I think our lives have meaning, and the best fiction reflects that, and urges us to look at ourselves more intensely and maybe even a bit more honestly.

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

Both, but maybe a bit more essential than difficult. I’ve been really lucky with Half Blood Blues, in that its editors were brilliant and shared a sensibility with the novel. It was a surprisingly smooth process.

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

Failure is quitting before you succeed.

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

When I’m between projects the days are listless, and the work doesn’t really add up to much. Once I’ve found the project and there is some momentum, I’ll write every day for four to six hours. Sometimes as much twelve, if things are really picking up steam. We’ve just had our first child, though, so I expect my writing schedule will change now. And by change I mean cease to exist!

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

I don’t know that I believe in writer’s block. Some problems you move through more slowly, some just solve themselves. But if the work isn’t coming, well, I’ve learned to trust it. Eventually something gives.

12 - What was your favourite Hallowe'en costume?

My husband went as a ghost. He cut holes in a white sheet and tossed it over his body. It was very convincing.

13 - 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?

Everything feeds into the stories themselves – rumours, news stories, experiences from travel etc. But the writing itself is sometimes informed by music – this new novel took jazz rhythms into the voice of the character himself, for example.

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

There are just so many. Naipaul and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Bolano. Toni Morrison, when I was younger.

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

Sing an opera.

16 - 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 considered law for a time, and being a nutritionist.

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

A crazy, all-consuming faith in the importance of the written word.

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

2666 by Roberto Bolano. The Killing by Kubrick.

19 - What are you currently working on?

Raising my newborn daughter.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 questions (second series) with Leon Rooke;

Leon Rooke [much longer bio here] is the author of seven novels, including this 1981 novel Shakespeare’s Dog, which won the Governor General’s Award, and the most recent The Last Shot, collecting eleven stories and a novella. Other major awards Rooke has received include The W.O. Mitchell Prize, the Canada-Australia Literary Prize, and the CBC Fiction Prize. He has published over 300 short stories, as well as poetry and plays, has mentored many of Canada’s most talented writers, and is the founder of The Eden Mills Literary Festival. A native of North Carolina who has lived in Canada for many years, Leon Rooke makes his home in Toronto and Mexico.

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

When my fist book appeared I had not long been living with the magnificent woman who would become my wife. The book strengthened her suspicion that I might be worth having and thus swept us into a forty-year alliance. A long crooked arc connects the first book and the last. Somewhere along the way humour became a part of the mix. My last book is told in a Glasgow street slang. In the beginning it would not have struck me that such was a thing to do.

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

I came to poetry first, in high school and later in college, publishing in little magazines such as Flame, Free Lance, and existaria. In Free Lance I had a poem on a page opposite one by Langston Hughes, which was thrilling. Next, I came to drama, then to fiction. Now I also paint and sculpt and if younger would take up the tap dance.

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 usually comes quickly although some books have taken decades. Many stories, poems, are generated out of an inviting first line. Sometimes the first draft is the final draft. Often first and last bear no resemblance whatsoever.

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 beginning?

I like a first line that invites a second line, and so on. Rarely do I see into the future. I don’t sit down and say, Now I think I’ll write a novel. I have first to learn where the material wants to take me, what length it might demand and so forth. “Lady GaGa, on the beach in her underwear, was unrecognized.” Is that a six-line poem or a 600 page book?

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

Rarely am I shy when behind a mike. The mike works as a curtain separating the thee from the me. They are not crucial to my being. I now enjoy giving them less than I once did.

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?

When is a thing worthwhile and when is it not. When and why is it that words fall aground and how is it possible to make them sing. The who who who is a recording angel ever content to remain mute. For the serious writer – someone who wants to make a contribution -- I don’t believe the traditional questions have changed that much.

7. What do you see the current role of the writer being in a larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

To save us from ourselves and each other, to tell the story, to justify, to seek revenge, to honour the fallen, to rescue the disillusioned, to forego the tripe, to bring your lover to the dance, to pass the night in loving embrace.

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

Editors, I’ve by and large found, generally know what they are doing. I’ve had as editor Ellen Seligman, Gordon Lish, John Metcalf, Anne Michaels, and Patrick Crean, among others. Rosemary Sullivan will serve as my editor for a new book of poems. They’ve all been super, whether the work required of them was minimal or vast.

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

WORK, FOR THE NIGHT IS COMING. Be attuned to the spirits. Here the sound of invisible wings.

10. How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to novels to poetry)? What do you see as the appeal?

Easy, easy. Feels perfectly natural. No more difficult than a child making mud pies. And let’s not forget stage plays. The appeal is obvious: you’re better than you think. Why limit yourself? How can you know what you cannot do, until you make the effort? Your “known” capacity may be deluding you. Those are not chains binding you.

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

The day now varies. I’ve had a “longish” life, but people die and that diminishes you. When younger I frequently worked around the clock. Around many clocks. A novella in24 hours is not unknown. A novel, and a good one, in six weeks isn’t. That isn’t necessarily to be regarded as work; that is living.

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

Inspiration is the shadow standing next to you. Reach out a hand and it will claim you. Or it may not. I’m not a big believer in Writer’s Block. The stoppage usually has as cause something other than the page. The brain goes into a dormant state. With patience, the reasons may be identified, a first step. Also, it helps if one does something remarkably different, like designing a new costume for a rock star or concocting chocolate eclairs for your sweetie.

13. What fragrance reminds you of home?

Which home? Pine-sol in the long ago. Her perfume in the now and then.

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?

David is right, which is another reason writing instructors keep telling students to read, read, read (not simply to learn technique, etc.). But David is being neglectful of more blithesome fields including those you mention and realities such as our own emotional lives and those lives which we observe. In recent years I have taken up painting; it comes as a revelation to me the likeness of that first slash of paint on a canvas and the opening line on a page.

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

Many, many, many. In fact, nearly everyone. Well, I mean by that that sometimes we may learn something even from terrible writers, though that isn’t something I’d like to see on a billboard.

16. What would you like to do that you haven’t yet done?

I don’t know. That question deserves a lot of thought.

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?

Marvell wrote “wanton troopers/riding by/have shot my fawn/and it will die.” I wouldn’t want to be the troopers, or the fawn. The writing bug bit me at about age twelve, and nothing much has obscured that path. Russell Banks has said he’d have ended up dead.

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

I became a writer after hearing someone say to me, “And you, stupid boy, will you also lead a useless life?”

19. What was last great book you read? The last great film?

The last great book I read (last night) was a Sotheby catalog, Contemporary Art and just before that Carolyn Forche’s incredible Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness. Last great film was the deeply-mistitled Levity, 2003, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Hunt.

20. What are you currently working on?

I’m just finishing up a new poetry collection at the moment called The April Poems. Several short stories are underway, plus a lengthy series of God poems, in collaboration with Marilyn Bowering out in BC. Some paintings, a few art boxes. Then flowers for the yard, should it ever stop raining.


12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 questions: Sarah Selecky

Sarah Selecky's stories have been published in Geist Magazine, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Event and The Journey Prize Anthology. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and has been teaching creative writing workshops in her living room for the past ten years. Her short story collection, This Cake Is for the Party, was released by Thomas Allen Publishers this year.

1 - How did your first book change your life?

I remember John Gould telling me once, when I was living and writing (anonymously, pre-publication) in Victoria, that the best time to write is before your first book comes out, because nobody is listening, nobody has any expectations, and you can experiment. You can write what you want, at your own pace. He was right. Now that my book is out, I am plagued with more doubts then ever before. When I sit down to write, I have to turn off way more taps. Publication has created new thought-faucets, and they pour out more complicated criticism now. It's a challenge.

The other thing that changed is that I've had to learn about self-promotion. When you're sending stories out to editors and magazines, you're also trying to convince people to invest in your writing, but in a different way. Promoting your book to bookstores and readers takes a great deal of time and energy. I don't have as much time to write as I'd like. I have to be more protective of my time, and learn how to prevent exhaustion. I'm figuring out the balance.


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

I write what I want to read. I'm a short fiction reader - I'm pretty obsessive about the form. I acquired the taste at a young age - probably from reading stories in magazines like Sassy and Seventeen - and I never gave it up. But I have been diving into non-fiction - Joan Didion, Rebecca Solnit, Annie Dillard - and I notice my voice is shifting, and that I now feel drawn to the essay form. It really is about what I'm reading. It's not a conscious choice.

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 not a quick and prolific writer. My book of stories was written over the better part of 8 years. I write skimpy and ridiculous first drafts that need a lot of development before they are worth reading. I have to collect a big bed of notes - small scratches, impressions, lines of dialogue, images - before I feel secure enough to attempt a first draft of anything. This is partly why I find it so difficult to write first drafts - it's  so humbling. Many of the stories in my book have been rewritten over 10 times. And the changes are extensive. I have all of these notebooks around the house - shelves of them - with bits and pieces from different stories, developments that were built over the years, worked out on paper, and then transcribed and worked into the final version. It's a mysterious and labour-intensive process. And I give myself swaths of non-writing time, too - I think this is crucial - where I let characters simmer without looking at them for weeks or months, so I can get some perspective.

4 - Where does 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?

Fiction usually begins with a question or a problem that I'm trying to work out. I find ways to act it out on the page, with imaginary people and places, so I can make sure that I really understand all sides of the problem by the end of the story. I might not answer the question in the end, but by the end of the story, I need to be sure that I understand everything I can about the question itself.

Right now I have this interesting thing happening with three characters, three situations - I thought that the project was about weaving these three people together, but now I'm looking at it and wondering, is it all the same thing? Is my mind just trying to figure out the same problem in three different ways? Do I need to just find the right one, and follow it through? We'll see what happens.

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

Public readings are so much fun. I enjoy them most of the time (it depends on the listeners, of course, and whether they get my sense of humour).  But I don't consider readings part of my creative process. By the time I read a story aloud, it's finished. Which means that I'm not really a part of it anymore - I'm giving it away. It's creative in the way having fun wrapping a present beautifully can be creative. But it's not generative for me.

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 try to keep theory out of it when I'm writing. That kind of abstract critical thought about literature really turns me on, and I love to do it with other people's work. I love it when people tell me their theories about what they think my stories are doing, what questions they're posing, etc. A reviewer once said something about my stories that was so well-observed, so smart, I now quote her when people ask me about what my book is about.

But my work as a writer is different. I want to use language to articulate what can't be put into words. That's an embodied process for me - I have to get out of my head in order to get to a place where I can do that.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Of course writers have a role. They're writing our world as we live it. There's this great line I just read in Sheila Heti's story (in Darwin's Bastards), "There Is No Time in Waterloo." A character says, "No future can exist until it exists, since we are all creating reality together in a radically flexible present." Writers are creating reality. We all understand who we are through the stories we tell ourselves. Writers have a powerful cultural role.

Garrison Keillor said that the writer's job is to observe. A writer pays attention to everything. Writers are vigilant observers: that's their role in society. I agree with him.

I visited a book club once, and one of the participants told me that after reading my book, she felt that everything in her life was imbued with meaning - the dish soap on the counter, the curtain tie, the keys and how they hang on the little hook. Everything felt more important, she said. Everything was significant. That was such a powerful comment. I don't know if she knew how much that comment validated the work that I do!

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

Essential. If you can find an editor who gets what you're doing, respects it, sees your limitations and your strengths clearly, understands where your work can join the conversation that is happening in contemporary literature, and can articulate all of those things to you, you're a fortunate writer. A good editor is better than anything - better than publication, better than money, better than a good review, better than a prize.  I can't say enough about this. I was very lucky to work with Zsuzsi Gartner for many years - she knew what I was capable of doing, and when I was taking shortcuts. She could see the sparkle of gold in my work when I could only see dirt, and she could see the gravel in there too, when I was trying to pass it off as precious metal.

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

You cannot know your story until you have written it first. Many people have said this in different ways. I can't remember where I read this lately, but it's worth repeating. It's kind of like that line in Sheila Heti's story (above) - maybe that's why I liked that line so much, actually!

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

Writing non-fiction is like skinny dipping. At first you feel so exposed and vulnerable! Then, once you're in the water, it feels just amazing.

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?

Roughly, it's like this: Wake up, make tea. Read a short story by someone great, like Amy Hempel or Lisa Moore or Deborah Eisenberg or Lee Henderson. Get inspired. Then start writing, with a timer to keep track. When I'm in between projects, I just write for at least 10 minutes before moving on to the rest of the day. When I'm in the middle of a project, and there is work to be done, I write from 9 - 11. When I'm revising/editing, I have more stamina - I work from 8 - 12.


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

I go outside. The natural world has everything I need in it - metaphor is everywhere. For example, sometimes just seeing the way bare tree limbs move in the wind can bring me back. Because the branches look so much like roots. And they look so much like the lines in the leaves. And these all look so much like capillaries. When I see that connection, it can snap me back to awe, which is where I need to be when I'm writing.

It can be hard to get there - when I'm stuck, it's usually because I'm caught in some old patterns and responses, and I don't know how to reconnect with awe right away. If I'm not too far gone, I'll read Annie Dillard for help. But if I'm really stuck, I can't read, either. Sometimes reading makes me nauseous when I'm stuck. Then I go elsewhere: the art gallery. Live concerts. Theatre. That can be a powerful way to get unstuck, too - find places where creativity is happening, become still enough to be receptive to it, and then put yourself there in the field. We're like little radios - we can tune into inspiration. It's a frequency.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lily of the valley.

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?

Of course. All of the above. I have a friend who recently told me that she was reading physics textbooks for inspiration. Something in the diagrams made her think about the way people work together. Metaphorically. Even though she knows not very much about physics, she was enthralled by the language - it was so different. But because everything is connected, if you're paying attention, you can find stories everywhere.

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

I've mentioned Annie Dillard - she's a big one for me right now.

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

I'd like to write a really tight novel.


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'd probably be a painter. I was a working artist, for a few years - I sold my work at the One of a Kind Show and the Toronto Outdoor Art Show, as well as other places. I sometimes wonder if I would have been a graphic novelist in another life. I still consider chef school.

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

Being an only child had something to do with it. That's why I love reading so much. And reading is the true cause, of course - a deep and profound love for reading. After I learned how to write, I simply wrote. All the time I was writing. I don't remember not writing. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. But I always had my notebook.

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

Annabel Lyon's A Golden Mean took the top of my head off.
And Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson's animated film - is the best thing I've seen on a screen in years.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I'm writing essays, and I'm writing a lot about writing.

I'm also working on this thing with the characters that I mentioned earlier. It might be a book.


12 or 20 (second series) questions;