12 or 20 (second series) questions with Heidi Wicks

Heidi Wicks has written for CBC, The Globe and Mail, The Telegram, The Independent and Newfoundland Quarterly.

Her work is featured in Breakwater’s creative nonfiction anthology, Best Kind, and fiction anthology, Hard Ticket.

Her first novel, Melt, was published by Breakwater in 2020.

She is the recipient of the 2019 Cox and Palmer Creative Writing Award and the Landfall Trust two-week writing residency at Kent’s Cottage in Brigus, Newfoundland.

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

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction? I have written non-fiction. I have worked as an arts reporter and freelance writer, and I work in communications as well. I have written creative non-fiction pieces as well. I began with non-fiction, and arts reporting/reviewing/critiquing, and then started writing fiction as part of a university course.

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 really depends! Sometimes an idea comes fairly fleshed out, but more often, there are seeds of an idea that percolate in the brain for a while, until some kind of story shape takes place. I often start with a scene at the beginning, and more scenes just unfold on the page as I'm typing. Sometimes I have a separate document going at the same time, to jot ideas down that come to me but that I'm not ready yet to put into the story.

4 - Where does a 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? My book began as one short story about a group of friends, but the rest of the friends faded away and the book became about just two of them. I initially thought the book would be a series of interconnected stories, but as I got to know the central characters more, and got a clearer ideas of what I wanted to happen to each of them, it became a novel.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? I do enjoy readings. For me, that's the fun part of it. You've been through all of the ugly, tangly, emotional parts of creating something, so hopefully by the time you have to read aloud from it in front of an audience, you've worked through all of the uncomfortable feelings that come with writing something, and you feel proud enough of it to celebrate it. I like putting a bit of a performance into readings, so polishing up a section of something to perform, is kind of fun.

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?

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? To turn a mirror on people, encourage people to think about themselves and their actions, to share perspectives, spread empathy and understanding.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? It depends on the editor! It's a bit of both. A good editor takes the time to get to know the author's writing style, and can also bring fresh eyes to the project.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? One of my professors once said to me (while teaching a theatre review course), "choose your words." - I think that's good advice for writing and for life.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (journalism to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal? I have always written creatively, in fiction or screenwriting. If you mean what is the appeal for writing in different genres, I find fiction freeing. With nonfiction/journalism, you have to stick to the facts. I like being able to take fact to different places, to have room to experiment and play and have fun with my writing.

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 work full time in a very busy job in communications, and I have a daughter, so I find it difficult to find time to write sometimes. But, I do find that writing early in the morning is productive. I get up at 6am, make coffee, and write for a couple of hours before work begins. Ideally, I will write for two hours and then by the end of the session, have a little outline for the next section, so that when I return to it that evening after work, or the next morning, I have a direction mapped out.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I'll go for a walk or hike. I love being in the woods, near the ocean, and just walk for a couple of hours or more. Preferably alone with my thoughts and imagination. Or I'll start reading even more, and find inspiration through others' work. I also like podcasts - Writers and Company is one of my favourites for inspiration. Another one is called Everything Is Alive - which is an interview show with inanimate objects. I get ideas sometimes from that one.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? The ocean/salt water air, pine trees, dirt/soil.

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'm inspired a lot by nature, and a lot by music. I like all sorts of music, but right now I'm listening to a lot of Brian Eno, Alice Coltrane, Aimee Mann - chill music. I also love Fiona Apple's new album. She recorded it in her home, I think at the beginning of the pandemic, and her dogs are barking in the background. Her voice is incredible.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? Lisa Moore is an important writer, mentor and friend to me. She was my thesis supervisor for my masters program, and that thesis became my first book. I've known Lisa for 13 years now - her writing is so alive, living and breathing, and she has an uncanny ability to make one fraction of a second seem as important as a whole decade. I admire her work, and her guidance has been a huge factor in why I have stuck with writing. 

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? Go to Southeast Asia.

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? Rock star! I used to be in music school, I wanted to be a singer. I would do that, or be a filmmaker or film critic.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? I once participated in the Great Blue Heron Writing Retreat in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. My mentor there was Sheldon Currie, and we had a conversation one day about why we choose to write. Sheldon said it's not a choice for him to write. He writes because he has to. That's how I feel. Writing is how I work out all my problems and questions.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? I recently read Some People's Children by Bridget Canning. It's a sweet, addictive coming-of-age story about a girl in a small town, who's facing first love and growing up and confronting secrets.

20 - What are you currently working on? I'm working on a short story about two neighbours who begin communicating with each other only through music, during lockdown.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

essays in the face of uncertainties

On May 8, someone on twitter asks: Why is it snowing? The following day, the same question. Today is colder than yesterday. The sky is overcast, and there’s even some rain.

I attempt to return to the head-space of writing, after my father’s funeral. This new post-father space. Given the three days I composed his obituary—between his death and the service—I’ve had to replace my background music from Brian Eno’s ongoingness to Chopin’s “Complete Nocturnes,” as performed by Brigitte Engerer. Eno had become infected with that onset of grief, an ongoingness within which I did not wish to live. I required a turn of the page. Chopin, for now. Until a further page reveals itself.

I feel emotionally exhausted, and attempting to figure out exactly what to do next. As Nathan Hill writes in his May “Postcard From the Pandemic: A Solid Little Feeling” for Poets & Writers: “It’s a paradox: I’ve never had so much time to be productive, yet so little will to produce.” If this suite of essays began as a deep dive into my distraction around global pandemic, another distraction has layered on top of another. I attempt to begin. I attempt some kind of spark or pilot light. As Ali Smith wrote, as part of her Artful (2013):

In the beginning was the word, and the word was what made the difference between form and formlessness, which isn’t to suggest that the relationship between form and formlessness isn’t a kind of dialogue too, or that formlessness had no words, just to suggest that this particular word for some reason made a difference between them—one that started things.

I am seeking that spark, that word. Can’t you smell oil? At my father’s funeral service, his former hired man, Jack McCourt, mentioning my father had said this during a visit, just prior to lockdown. Can’t you smell oil? Jack couldn’t, and neither could the subsequent furnace man my father called in. There’s nothing wrong here. Two weeks prior to my father’s death, his furnace exploded out from under him, bursting out black oil smoke throughout the farmhouse at 3am. The furnace, of course, is set directly underneath his main floor bedroom, underneath his hospital bed. How did the furnace explode out and not up? Bits of metal dug deep in the wooden stairs, but the cellar ceiling remained unaffected. And while everyone else panicked, he remained unshaken. You’re making too much of this, he told my sister. Can’t you just put me in the shed?

I don’t have to think about days of the week anymore. My tracking, every second Friday to head to the farm for a weekend of caregiving, is gone. I can’t track days. Christine offers that I could, possibly, start paying attention to Rose’s homeschooling, and the various Aoife and Rose school-related zoom meetings scheduled throughout each week. This is less suggestion than admonition. She’s right, of course, but she misses the substance of my loss of schedule, and the feeling of being untethered in my grief. My father, my final parent, and the loss of the last vestiges of the family home, the family farm.

In Sabrina Orah Mark’s column for The Paris Review, “Fuck the Bread. The Bread Is Over.” posted May 7, she writes:

I send my sons on a scavenger hunt because it’s day fifty-eight of homeschooling, and I’m all out of ideas. I give them a checklist: a rock, soil, a berry, something soft, a red leaf, a brown leaf, something alive, something dead, an example of erosion, something that looks happy, a dead branch on a living tree. They come back with two canvas totes filled with nature. I can’t pinpoint what this lesson is exactly. Something about identification and possession. Something about buying time. As I empty the bags and touch the moss, and the leaves, and the twigs, and the berries, and a robin-blue eggshell, I consider how much we depend on useless, arbitrary tasks to prove ourselves. I consider how much we depend on these tasks so we can say, at the very end, we succeeded.

essays in the face of uncertainties

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Tyler Pennock

Tyler Pennock is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Métis family around the Lesser Slave Lake area of Alberta. They are a graduate of Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program. They currently live in Toronto, where they have worked as an educator and community worker for over ten years.

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

Taking the time to explore some of the concepts and difficulties in BONES was very helpful for me, though it didn't change me after it was completed - it's more like a record of a long journey.  This definitely feels different from previous projects as it is a larger work, including things that I'd written decades ago, and recently. 

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

I started writing when I was 8 or so, maybe younger. I remember completing a poetry collection, complete with drawings for a 5th grade english class, starting my love of the process. I wish I still had that. I remember drawing a border on every page, out of leaves ... Beyond that I've always loved the distilled nature of poetry, and the attention to spaces, pauses and structures to do what you hope.

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?

Writing poetry is a lot like writing essays for me in this regard: You can't really write something unless you've given yourself the appropriate amount of time to think about it, first. Some of my drafts - such as the title poem for bones, came in a couple of hours, others have taken over a decade. Don't let time fool you though - I spend a lot of time thinking about things before I write them down.

4 - Where does a poem 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?

All poems for me start as notes. I have a journal that includes short phrases and thoughts, as well as dreams. Those things eventually become poems or plays in time. I also keep a lot of notes in my phone. Some notes will stay in that form for years - long before I decide to write them. In terms of a project, I will conceive of one before I begin to write it, but as to which thoughts get included is often a mystery, at least until I write them. I usually will write a number of poems before I put them in any order.  It's when the story comes out at me that I commit to a particular order.

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

Yes - poetry is a relationship - between yourself and the listener. Even if you are read by someone long after you move on, they have a voice that speaks your words to their mind. I don't like one-way readings, for many people it's a reminder of the way colonial societies treated our ancestors - as curiosities. I prefer to involve the audience in one way or another, and then use that to inform the work I present, or works I haven't yet completed. Readings can be one-sided, and I hate that.

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 question myself, always. There are deeply personal considerations around spirit and community that have to be addressed with every work I create. For some, including me - the things that I turn to are things we wouldn't normally reveal to others - even our partners or siblings. I will say that almost every work begins with the strong feeling that staying with old european ways (and the North American equivalent) of viewing the world is harmful. Very.

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?

We are witnesses. Like imperfect mirrors, we show what we see back to people. We never memorize or fully recreate - which allows us to uncover things that society has trained itself not to see.

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

It is difficult, but not because it is antagonistic - it isn't. Someone is looking very pointedly into some very deeply personal things for you. If they misunderstand, that hurts regardless of the cause. I will say that having an editor who is in the very least committed to respecting your worldview and place and culture is invaluable. Having a publisher offer to find an Indigenous editor for you is even more so.

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

Keep a notebook.  Always.

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

It comes with experience. I can write theatre, creative nonfiction, and I love them very much. But the collaboration in theatre is very different than in poetry, and it takes some getting used to.  I still love it though.  Aside from that, I do have difficulty writing short stories and fiction. I won't stop trying.

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?

At work - haha. My only routine is to change routines. I change spaces as well. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes, I don't. Sometimes I write in the morning, sometimes at night. My body rules those things. And if it doesn't want me to write ... it won't let me.

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

I usually delete the last few lines of what I'm working on.  Often it is because I've ended the work unintentionally and I'm trying to make it last beyond that.  This isn't just my practice, Lee Maracle taught me that one.  Sometimes also it is best to walk away and return later.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of Autumn.

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 definitely informs my work.  I imagine the creative process for musicians, and that inspires me to write.

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

Monkey Beach - Eden Robinson
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative - Thomas King
When Fox is a Thousand - Larissa Lai
The Wizard of the Crow - Ngugi wa Thi'ongo
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Man With the Beautiful Eyes - Charles Bukowski
Imajica - Clive Barker

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

Sing for a poetry audience.

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"m a teacher right now.  But if I wasn't interested in that, I'd have been a pilot probably. I like the work required.

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

It was so long ago. The very first thing I wrote was based on my parent's stories - or what I remembered of them. I wanted to recreate the wonder I'd had when listening to my Dad tell a good tale.

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

Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
Parasite - Bong Joon-Ho

20 - What are you currently working on?

Submissions for contests and other requests. I just finished another book and submitted it, BLOOD - for consideration.  Soon I'll return to writing a play I've been working on, Starwatchers.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;