1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It didn’t. It carried me along for a while, it was fun for a while, but life moved forward with or without it. I was surprised. I thought that the first book was supposed to mark the beginning of your new life. Turns out it was just a signpost on your real life.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Probably happenstance, although very few children come to non-fiction first.
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?
Starting isn’t the problem. It’s always the finishing that kills me. Things come fast, the words fall all over the table, and then I spend the next year rearranging them.
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?
I like working on the idea of a book. It’s sort of reverse sculpting. I begin with the rough, unpolished form of what the story could be. It’s the sculpture of an elevator pitch. Then I write scenes, characters, and ideas on clay blobs and throw them at the sculpture to see what sticks. Eventually, after I’ve thrown enough blobs that I see the form of something else, I go to work on it. I will spend the next year rewriting it, usually by changing the tense.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Right before a reading, I’ll curse myself for not writing any scenes tailored for public reading. I promise myself I’ll do it next time. And here we are all over again.
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 don’t know the answer until after I’ve finished the book, and someone else tells me what it was about. I’m always mildly surprised that they’re right.
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?
To finish the book and not know what it’s about. Those books are a product of that primal part of us that doesn’t speak in words but in symbols. It tends to speak greater truths than we can. The role of the writer is make the primal part heard, so that someone can point out what the book was really about.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It’s always nice to have two parents raising a child. The book isn’t complete until the editor finishes.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Always put the toilet paper in the toilet paper holder. You can’t do great things if you don’t do the mundane things first.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (journalism to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I was a mediocre journalist, so I found it quite easy to transition to a mediocre writer.
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?
My routine is a multi-step process: I plan what I want to write in a year so I know how much I need to write in a month. Once I know that, I will know how much I need to write in a week. Each weeknight, I set my alarm to get up at 5:30 AM and to write for two hours before breakfast.
A typical day is a one-step process: sleep in.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Hemingway knew the answer to this one. I like his writing.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Fresh earth turned over by a bulldozer. My father was a heavy equipment operator. The smell of pasture earth, and a sweet scent of diesel. I’m a child again, and it’s summer again, and I can run barefoot, and it doesn’t hurt.
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 think books come from disagreements with other books. The primal part of you disagrees with something the primal part of someone else said, and your story is its rebuttal. When you think of it that way, you have a duty to write the book and keep the conversation going.
That kind of dispute comes more easily between books because everything else expresses itself so clearly and vividly, unlike a story made of 80,000 words, which you have to read sequentially. With the latter, your inner self is quite engaged. With the former, it’s just wowed by the pretty colours.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Stephen King had the biggest impact on my life because I read him voraciously in my childhood, when I first thought I wanted to be a writer. I’m not sure how it’s affected me because it’s so deep in the code. But I could have had worse influences. History will count him as one of the greatest writers of all time. I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Ride a motorbike across Canada. It will never happen because I know that I’ll hate it after the first day when my back starts to hurt.
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 have been much more successful if I had not been a writer, because I would have poured that energy into my career. Writing was always a counterweight to my job. They both suffered from the other.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
As a child, I was a very good daydreamer. I wove great, vivid fantasies and, one day, I thought to myself, “I should write this down.” So I did, and then I read it, and I thought, “I really like reading what I’ve written.” We’ve been married ever since.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Shogun by James Clavell. Every decade or so, I find myself returning to it.
The Creator, directed by Gareth Edwards. The baby AI knew all along, and she planned it that way.
20 - What are you currently working on?
A too-ambitious project. 1984ish. Where Big Brother is us. Sort of an Orwellian society regulated by upvotes and likes. A world where the rich live in the Inner City and everyone else is outside the tall black walls that keep them out. The only way into the Inner City is a fiercely competitive, unpaid internship, and our hero, Winston Smith, must find a way to get in to the In.
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