Leslie Vryenhoek is the acclaimed author of Scrabble Lessons (short fiction) and Gulf (poetry). Her first novel, Ledger of the Open Hand, published in
May 2015, looks at how our relationship with money colours how we relate to our
loved ones, and how we come to treat love as a balance sheet. Leslie’s work has
been published and broadcast across Canada and internationally, winning awards
across genres. As a communications specialist, Leslie has worked in advanced
education, international development, emergency response, and the arts. A
former Manitoban now based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, she is the founding
director of Piper’s Frith: Writing at Kilmory. There’s more at www.leslievryenhoek.com.
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, Scrabble
Lessons (short stories), changed my life by disabusing me of the notion
that publishing a book would change my life. Other things, like deciding to
change my life, have been much more effective.
Writing those stories, I wasn’t part of a “writing
community” yet. I had such confidence in my voice and my ability and felt
really comfortable inside the skin of the stories. By the time Scrabble Lessons was published, I’d
moved across the country and in with another writer, and I was suddenly
surrounded by writers whose own first books had garnered big acclaim,
catapulting them into hot careers. My experience was different—and my
confidence took a beating. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.
So when I began Ledger
of the Open Hand, I allowed external advice to rule and dismissed my instincts.
It took me a long time to come back to my own voice and intent. Ultimately, though,
I think the circuitous journey made me a better writer and produced a better
book.
2 - How did you come
to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I didn’t come to fiction—or any genre—first. I came to words
first—words, and the desire to arrange them in ways that created an understanding,
a different way of seeing, both for me and for the reader or listener.
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’s very changeable, project to project. Some things arrive
whole in my head—so immediate, so just there that I can’t
scribble fast enough to get them down. Those are the best experiences—and
usually the best pieces.
More often, whatever I’m writing will emerge as I’m writing
it, unspooling just far enough out in front to keep me moving, the way an unfamiliar
highway does when you drive it at night. The trick, I find, is to not to speed
up and overdrive the headlights.
I jot notes when I’m conceiving a larger project, before
it’s gelled enough to start typing. But I end up ignoring most of them. I go
back to writing out notes when I’m editing, redrafting, rethinking—that for me
is where the best creative work happens, and those notes prove far more useful.
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?
There’s always some seed—some idea or character I want to
get inside, so I have to find the best way to get at it. It’s intuitive. Usually
I know quickly if it’s a poem or a short story, an essay or a novel. I’ve never
started anything thinking it would be short and then had it develop into
something longer—a story that became a novel, for example—but I’ve sure embarked
on long narratives, only to realize I didn’t have that much to say after all.
What it’s all to become is often less obvious. Stories and
poems often begin as discrete, and then I realize there’s something larger
evolving, some vein I’m mining.
5 – Are public
readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of
writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading. I love microphones. Maybe I love being the
centre of attention. I’m the sort who needs to be disciplined about a time
limit (and I am) because I could stand up there and read the whole damn book as
long as I thought people were (even politely) listening. The magic of it is in
seeing how the audience responds—because you rarely get to hang over someone’s
shoulder while they’re reading your stuff.
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 another writer said to me, “We all have some core issue
we return to in different ways, hoping to resolve it,” I realized my thing
might be “But it’s not fair.” I’m not sure that actually qualifies as a
theoretical concern so much as my inner four-year-old’s lament, but the
imbalance of give and take in life—certainly in relationships—seems to keep
coming up. I suppose the question behind it that interests me is just how much luck,
good and bad, plays in the average life, how much is what we’re dealt and how
much is what we choose. In Ledger, the uneven distribution of
life’s rewards, of good fortune and good feelings, love and money, are
undercurrents throughout the novel. In a small way, in a microscopic way, I’m
trying to interrogate the larger issues about inherent inequity in the way the
world works.
I also return, over and over, to the concept of belonging. The
poetry in Gulf was concerned with how to define home. A new project
that’s hovering in my peripheral vision and just starting to coalesce is
focused on what it means to belong to a place—who gets to claim it and whether
it’s granted externally or found within.
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?
God, that’s the question that’ll keep me up all night. I
don’t have anything close to a solid answer, so allow me to equivocate. I think
there are as many roles as there are writers. There’s room for entertaining,
and there’s room (sometimes in the same house) for the hard reality of deep journalism.
Most of us, writing in any genre, are trying to reveal something, small or
large, about the world in which we find ourselves.
But we are at a very tricky place in our evolution—as a
nation, as a global community—and a century or two from now, people are going
to scour what we’re creating today for some understanding about how we got here
and how we responded, and I’m hoping there are a few good writers who will last
to shed some honest light on the early part of the 21st century.
8 - Do you find the
process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Utterly essential, once the work is far enough along. It’s
like having someone come into your new house after you’ve arranged the
furniture and say, “You know, if you just moved that there and turned it
sideways, you’d open up the whole space.” What a different brain can see always
amazes me.
9 - What is the best
piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Annie Dillard—and I’m very much paraphrasing—said something
like, “Don’t hoard the best stuff. Use it and trust more good stuff will come.”
10 - How easy has it
been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories to the novel)?
What do you see as the appeal?
It’s easy across a long span of time, though when I’m
working in a particular genre I stay there. Usually for months. I can switch
gears between two prose pieces, but I can’t write a poem in the morning and a
story in the evening. I wish I could, because poetry opens up channels for using
language and emphasizes potency and brevity in a way that is very good for my
prose.
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 tend to have a lot of obligations—contract and volunteer work,
family responsibilities, online Scrabble games—so my routines are always
changing. As a result, I write in big, concentrated blocks, quite obsessively
for days at a time when the world isn’t pulling on my sleeve. I would love to
be able to write a few hours each morning, but when I get going I have trouble
stopping. So I like to clear my schedule and then write like mad.
12 - When your
writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better
word) inspiration?
Much depends on the nature of the stall. A long, fast walk
if I’m just jammed. Our old country house in a small Newfoundland outport if
I’m utterly lost. Vodka if I’ve just lost my nerve.
13 - What fragrance
reminds you of home?
My head went straight to: Home? Please define your terms. My
gut went straight to lilacs. Lilacs and Ozonal.
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?
Conversations, whether they involve me or not. Eavesdropping,
especially when I have to fill in the blanks. Also news stories that leave
something to the imagination. Much like Daneen in Ledger, I pilfer other people’s juicy details, plunder their
screwed up families.
15 - What other
writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of
your work?
My husband is a writer, and a fantastic cook. He feeds me,
which I find essential to my work. Also,
sometimes other writers invite us over and feed us. Very important. Especially
if they let something slip about their screwed up families over the main course.
16 - What would you
like to do that you haven't yet done?
1. Write a screenplay. 2. Hike by myself through the southwestern
US—Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. I’m certain there’s something waiting for me
there, though I have no idea what. Death by tarantula, perhaps.
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?
For many years I worked in communications—public relations,
all that—which is part writing, but also the opposite of writing in the sense
we’re talking about here. And I loved it:
loved honing the message, loved managing crises, loved deflecting the heat in
heated interviews. The desire to focus on my own writing took me away from that
career, but I might go back to it yet if the right opportunity presents itself.
My other fantasy career: house painter (interiors only and
get to pick the colours).
18 - What made you
write, as opposed to doing something else?
I did do something else. And then something else and
something else again, all in a vain attempt not to write. But the writing kept
banging on my door, so I let it in and then bam, next thing I knew I got used
to not having to leave the house every morning—and to asserting ideas that were
actually my own.
19 - What was the
last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill recently blew me away. Gorgeous, evocative, gutting. The last
great film I saw was probably a television series: Scott & Bailey comes
immediately to mind. I’m enamoured of the TV that’s happening these days,
especially in Britain and Scandinavia. Sharp writing, complex characters, and
no pat answers.
20 - What are you
currently working on?
I have a pretty solid idea for another novel that I’ve just
started about interconnectivity—in nature, among people, and through the
internet—and the near impossibility of escaping the past. But just now I’m
longing to write something short and saucy, so I might detour into short
stories to satisfy that craving.
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