June 14, 2010

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Sheree Fitch

A few months ago, The Afterword ran their Canada Also Reads, and I noticed a novel by Sheree Fitch on the longlist. At that point, I knew Sheree Fitch from the much-adored board book Kisses Kisses Baby-O(which, incidentally, was provided to all newborns in Nova Scotia in 2008 as part of a program called Read to Me) and I was intrigued to read a novel by its author. So I read Kiss the Joy as it Flies over a couple of days last winter, which brought me such pleasure. And seriously, pleasure in January is an elusive creature, and so I decided email Fitch and thank her for a glimpse of it. Her response was very kind, and this email interview grew out of our conversation.

Sheree Fitch is amazing– here’s proof. Though I have read her picture book Peek A Little Boo every day for the past six months, I am not remotely tired of it. Her poetry collection for adults In This House There Are Many Women is sad, wise and funny. Her first novel for adults Kiss the Joy as it Flies, I decided, was “Fannie Flagg meets Miriam Toews”. When I bought Sleeping Dragons All Around for Harriet, it was really a gift for me. Fitch has also written novels for young adults, and the latest, Pluto’s Ghost, is out in September.

I: I just started re-reading Kiss the Joy as It Flies this morning, and joy indeed. In order to write a novel, did your poetry have to be tamed into prose? What was that process like?

SF: A good question. Short answer would be yes. But… not that simple.

I’ve been writing ( seriously) since the age of 20. In the beginning, I was writing short stories. I wanted to be Alice Munro. I took a short story and play-writing and poetry course– I was interested in all and any kind of writing. As things turned out, my first published work was a short story for children. I was inspired every day by my own and so I started writing “for” them. I decided I would learn everything I possibly could about the art and craft of writing for children and I soon found myself gravitating towards nonsense– word play and the oral tradition combined. I was hooked — mostly by the pure joy in playing with language the genre allowed. So I kept exploring other genres and this included adult poetry –much more sober content, free-verse– but still I had a sense of working in an oral tradition. “Utterature” I called it in my master’s thesis.

After a little over a decade of mostly focusing on verse and poetry, going to prose meant the orality was gone– and I really did not like that! I knew if I was ever to go back to prose that language would still be paramount and voice would become very important– either voice of character or voice of narrator.

The Gravesavers –my novel for early teens took me, yes it did, eight years of working on and off. And this is where I tamed the poet and rhymster long enough to do things like develop character and learn and manage narrative arc. I think work in radio and drama and some film helped too in terms of sense of story etc.

But I am painfully slow. The book that comes out this year took five years. Senior teens and up but again, language and word sparks and how it sounds in the reading. Cadence– all things I still work with. Vital. It is challenging because I am pretty sure I hear words the way many people hear musical notes. Say MUD. Say Zamboni. Every word is a poem if you want it to be. So Kiss the Joy… was me intentionally writing a novel and finding a storytelling voice for adult work that word-played in ways that I hoped was fresh and would lend to a great out-loud reading.

cling clang the way words bang
slip slide and boomerang around
the alphabet’s surround sound
and me —a wannabe composer
a writer who is Clown.

I have a fave line in the novel, but you will have to ask…

I: So I’ll ask?

SF: The line is on page 263, second paragraph. “Mercy rose, washed, ate, brushed, flossed, flushed, dressed, scrunched, lip-glossed, smacked, smiled, dabbed, patted, changed, fluffed, fed the cat, and left.” A line like in a kids book and all alliteratively tongue twisty– but the storyteller of Mercy, that omnipotent narrator was playful. Next time , who knows?

I: Is there any sense to nonsense? (“Cervix, ovaries, clitoris, uterus, vagina, Saskatchewan. She giggled, remembering the silliness from childhood.”) If nonsense is useful, is it something specific to childhood? Why are adults so drawn to sobriety?

SF: Oh– this is a huge conversation we could have. Think of the fool in Shakespeare. Think of the concept of holy fool, the not knowing, wise person. In a world that makes no sense to me, making nonsense has always made sense to me.

So yes, I actually, honestly, think nonsense is an art form in which profound truths can be revealed. Not always. Sometimes. A kind of tricksterism.

If you read The Clown at the Foot of the Ladder by Henry Miller, or Henrich Boll’s The Clown, they are two books that explore this in different ways. Look at one line punch line zingers…in Dorothy Parker.. pow pow.

These clown books I just mentioned are not funny but illustrate my fascination with the sad/ happy contradictions inherent in life, like the sunshower Mercy Beth finds so strange. She herself is some kind of an admirable frustrating lovable buffoon to me.

I am doing an essay for publication based on a convocation speech I just gave called “Lessons I Keep On Learning” and will explain “play” and nonsense a bit more. (I love to ruminate…..a Mercy wannabe.)

I think I admire comedic genius most. (more…)

April 11, 2010

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Kerry Ryan

This is the way the world works: I met Kerry Ryan last fall when her sister married my husband’s friend, and we were introduced at the wedding reception as two Kerrys who like books. As I enjoyed meeting her, I borrowed her book The Sleeping Life from the library, and absolutely loved it. These days, I have my own copy and was very happy to reread it in preparation for this interview, which was conducted over three days last week, with Kerry answering my questions by email from her home in Winnipeg.

I: Hi Kerry. I started rereading your book this morning– the first section “Winter Itch” sure seems more foreign and exotic here in April than it did back in December, which is a relief. The first thing I want to ask you about is your collection’s narrative “I”. When I’m talking to fiction writers, I make a real point of avoiding conflation of the writer’s and the narrator’s voices, but this seems harder to do with poetry (unless we’re reading something like Gwendolyn MacEwen’s TE Lawrence poems, but even then…). Do you agree? And the following is not a veiled question as to your work’s autobiographical content, because frankly, I don’t care about that, but I would like to know how you talk about the “I” of these poems without referring to yourself. Can you?

KR: Great question! I DO find it difficult to separate the poet from the poem — both as a reader and a writer. I’m not sure why we, as readers, make these assumptions with poetry and not fiction. Is it because there’s not (generally) the same attention to character development in a poem as a story, and thus less distance between the writer and the voice? Or because there’s a tradition of poetry being confessional and soul-baring, a kind of mystique around poems coming from a deeper, more intimate place within the writer? I don’t know. But, as much as I hate stereotypes, I do think we’re usually right to deduce a poem’s “I” is the author, at least at some level.

As a poet, it’s important to me that my work be grounded in genuine experience. But that’s very different than historical accuracy. (How freeing to discover that a poem doesn’t have to be about “what actually happened,” that I could use a poem to imagine a new scenario, a new ending, a better one!) So, while the “I” in my poems shares many things in common with my actual self, especially in terms of experiences, “I” is a character. My friends and family might recognize me in certain elements, but the “I” in my poems is often smarter, more articulate and more graceful than I actually am (though sometimes she’s more lonely, sad or shy than I am). I might look at this differently if I were a more experienced, or scholarly writer, but when I talk about my poems or read them, I proudly claim my “I.” (more…)

February 18, 2010

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Amy Jones

UPDATE: Amy Jones’ book reviewed in The Globe & Mail

It would have been hard not to have encountered Amy Jones’ writing during these last few years, with her stories appearing in a variety of Canadian literary journals and her 2006 CBC Literary Award for short fiction. In 2008, Amy won the Metcalf-Rooke award for What Boys Like, which was published by Biblioasis. Before the collection came out, three of its stories appeared in The New Quarterly 111, and once I read them, I knew this was a book I was going to love. It was.

I’d never met Amy until she arrived for our interview on Friday February 5th, but I can tell you now that she’s lovely. We set to talking in the living room over obligatory tea and scones, while Harriet emptied her baskets.

I: I was curious to read in your The New Quarterly interview that part of your education in short stories was learning to read them as well as to write them. What did that education entail?

AJ: I think it was just reading a lot of them. One of the first short story books I read was Barbara Gowdy’s We So Seldom Look on Love and I read it the way that a lot of people who don’t read short stories would, [thinking] “No! I wanted it to keep going. I wanted to find out what happens next.”

I had to retrain my brain to consume a short story. I think of short stories as more akin to poetry, or like art. A painting, instead of something that goes on and on. You know, I look at that painting on the wall and I take it in for what it is–

I: It was done by an elephant.

AJ: You’re kidding.

I: So maybe it’s not the best example.

AJ: No, but I see it for what it is, I get from it whatever emotion or story I think it’s telling. As opposed to sitting down and watching a movie, or reading a novel. But when I started reading short stories, I thought they would be like novels, but shorter…

So I read [the Gowdy book], and then I read The Broken Record Technique by Lee Henderson. A friend of mine gave it to me when I first started writing short stories and she was like, “You should read this if you want to write short stories.” And I read it, and I really didn’t understand how to read it. And now, it’s one of my favourite short story collections. Same with the Barbara Gowdy one.

I had to learn to slow down, I think. When I read novels, and I’m still guilty of this, I have this really bad habit of jumping to dialogue and racing through descriptions and not really savouring every single word that comes along. But in short stories, every word is so weighted that you have to spend more time with it.

I: Is there a short story collection you’d recommend for someone who wants to get into the form?

AJ: One of my favourite short story writers is Aimee Bender. I read The Girl in the Flammable Skirt because it was recommended to me early on and it totally blew me away. It was so different from anything else that I had ever read and it felt like it gave me permission to do whatever I wanted. So that’s one, and then anything by Lisa Moore.

I: What do you like about writing short stories?

AJ: I like being able to be ambiguous. Right now, I’m trying to write longer pieces, and I’m having a hard time loosening up. I really like the tightness of short stories.

I: But then for a lot of readers, that ambiguity is the problem.

AJ: I think when people say they’re turned off by the ambiguity of short stories, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re used to the story continuing. I get that so much: “I want to know what happens next.”

I: And they think it’s a compliment.

AJ: Totally! “You need to write a novel about this.” They say that about “Church of the Latter-Day Peaches” all the time.

I: I just wanted it edited so Marty didn’t die. Which is different.

AJ: I sort of like the idea that with a short story you can give somebody a little snapshot into a life or a situation and they can use their imagination to fill in the blanks around it.

I: So maybe learning to accept that ambiguity is part of learning to read short stories.

AJ: I think so. It’s not so much that I’m purposefully obtuse when I’m writing. I want people to know what I’m getting at in a short story, but at the same time I want readers to be able to fill in the blanks around it, to imagine what if these people lived in the world.

I: A lot of your characters are on the edge, particularly the ones we get really close to. The only ones who seem to have control, if only in their ability to manipulate people, are Leah in “A Good Girl” and Emily in “All We Will Ever Be“– both characters seen from a distance in your narrative. But if we were able to get access to their minds, the way we do with the other characters, do you think they’d be as lost as the others?

AJ: Yeah, I’m pretty sure they would be.

I: They were fabulous characters, so hard and ruthless.

AJ: That’s good to hear. Both of those stories started out as experiments, in a way. I wanted to see if I could do the male point of view, for one thing. And I think [Leah and Emily] are very similar characters to the other girls in my stories, but as seen from a different perspective. So, I think a lot of what they are is just the flipside, the way a male would perceive some of the girls, who are actually insecure and pretty crazy. (more…)

January 26, 2010

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Patricia Storms (for Family Literacy Week!)

I first encountered Patricia Storms through her blog Booklust, and I think I’ve only ever met her two or three times in person, but I feel as though I know her much better than two or three times would allow. She is a generous spirit who radiates such warmth and energy, she has a delightful sense of humour, and she’s a talented illustrator (of books including The 13 Ghosts of Halloween, Edward and the Eureka Lucky Wish Company, and Good Granny Bad Granny) and now author/ illustrator (of her latest book The Pirate and the Penguin). I love her books, I think she’s fabulous, and I’m so pleased that she’s answered some of my questions about writing and illustrating picture books, and also about family literacy.

I: Funny, we call them “picture books”, but then the pictures themselves are so often regarded as secondary (that an illustrator might not receive the same credit as an author of the text, for example). What role do you think illustrations play in children’s books? And why do the illustrations get less respect?

PS: In my Utopian world, the writer and the artist would get equal-billing, since they are both so dependent on each other. Ideally, the artist (I would hope) would be more than just a hired hand doing grunt work and translating literal images onto the page from the words provided. In a good picture book, I see the illustrator as someone who takes the story to another level of delight, imagination and entertainment. The illustrator should be just as much of a story-teller as the author. But they should not be competing with each other. It makes me think of a couple in love, walking in the forest holding hands, each pointing to the different things they both see on their travels. Each person has a unique perspective, but they are still connected, and are grounded in the same environment (the story).

Perhaps ‘get less respect’ is a tad dramatic. (I know, I know ­ I’m the one who used this phrase in a previous email conversation. Heaven knows, I can be a tad dramatic at times). That being said, I have on occasion encountered a certain lack of appreciation for what illustrators (and might I add, especially cartoonists) do for picture books. It can be small annoying things like every time I illustrate a book I have to send a special request to Amazon so that they will add my name at the top of the book entry, following the author. Or really shocking situations like when Madonna ‘wrote’ all those kid’s books, and the illustrators didn’t have their names on the cover of the book at all (of course that is a unique and hopefully never-to-be-repeated situation by any other author). Usually it just seems to me that in terms of promotion, the writer’s name gets more coverage than that of the illustrator. And yet it is called a ‘picture’ book. But I have to be fair, here. It’s the writer who comes up with the idea for the story, and yes, the words are usually crafted long before any pictures appear. As much as I would like equal billing, I must concede that the writer is steering the ship (am I using too much cheesy imagery here? This is the wannabe hack writer coming out in me). So perhaps it is assumed that since the writer is the one who has thought of the original idea and the story, then the illustrator will never be as ‘creative’ as the author, and is simply following the author’s lead. I would rather not see the relationship of author and illustrator in this manner. And I am starting to ramble. Next question.

I: Over the course of your career, what have you learned about the art of illustrating children’s books that would have surprised you in the beginning?

PS: I had always assumed that when an illustrator was hired to draw the pictures for a picture book manuscript, that the story was completely polished and finished at this point. But this is not always the case, and the artist may go off in some interesting directions, while editors are still actually doing last-minute edits on the story. Sometimes art can change at the last minute because of this.

I was also very surprised to find out how much control the Marketing Department (in some publishing houses) has in terms of which artist is chosen for specific projects. But I do have to remind myself that as much as I may just want to create silly, adorable pictures for kids, it is, in the end, a commercial product, and well, publishers do appreciate making money (as do I).

One aspect of this industry which really surprised me was when I was told that some big box bookstores even have editorial control over potential manuscripts and art. They are consulted by publishers and can say yea nor nay on a project, if they think it will or will not sell. They can also recommend creative changes on book covers. Frightening.

I: You’ve recently made the leap from illustrator to author too, of your most recent book The Pirate and the Penguin. Would this be a natural extension for any illustrator? Was it a natural extension for you, and why?

PS: I don’t think making the leap from illustrator to author is for every artist. Not every illustrator has a gift of the written word. Some just have no interest in doing it at all (and really, why would one willingly enter into another career that has the potential to do more serious damage to one’s already delicate ego?)

Becoming a picture book author was a natural extension for me, though. I have always loved words just as much as art, and I think this has a lot to do with my enduring love of cartoons and comics. In fact, that’s how I learned to read ­ through cartoons, comic strips and comic books, in conjunction with picture books, of course. As a kid I wrote and drew countless comic strips, and as I got older, I enjoyed writing stories and poems and my own one-panel gag cartoons. Any chance I could get to not write a standard dull essay in high school English, and instead do something creative, I took it. (For example, in my grade 13 Canadian English course, I opted to write a musical based on Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz).

As much as I enjoy illustrating the words of others, I do have my own ideas that I would love to see come alive in a book. I sometimes have to pinch myself when I look at The Pirate and the Penguin, ­ I can’t believe I’ve managed to get this far with my dreams. I hope I may be allowed to write and illustrate more stories in the future. But I gotta be truthful ­ for me, it’s very hard, writing picture book stories. The writing is much harder to do than the art. So really, just ignore everything I was kvetching about in question one. What the hell do I know? (more…)

October 19, 2009

Author Interviews@ Pickle Me This: Jennica Harper

I first met Jennica Harper in the early 1990s, when I was about the same age as her protagonist in What It Feels Like for a Girl. Back then, she was my older cousin’s girlfriend who wrote(!), and though I could never think of anything clever enough to say to her, I admired her from across the room. When a couple of years ago, however, I read her book The Octopus and Other Poems, I was so taken with it that I had to convey my admiration directly. I sent an email and Jennica responded with what I’ve come to understand is characteristic graciousness and generosity, and since then we’ve bonded over Crowded House (as you do).

Jennica will be featured in two readings next week in Toronto for the International Festival of Authors. Her newest book is What It Feels Like For a Girl: “a series of poems following the intense friendship between two teenagers as they explore pop icons, pornography, and the big, strange world of sex.” She was kind enough to answer my questions from her home in Vancover.

I: What It Feels Like For a Girl is not your average book of poetry. A book-length ode to Madonna, friendship, dancing and music, it explores adolescent obsession with pornography, images of female sexuality, of desire, of betrayal. Where did this work begin? How did it evolve into its finished product?

JH: The genesis for this story was a complicated, all-consuming friendship I had when I was 13 – my first love, in a way. I’d been haunted by this friendship, this girl, this time in my life for quite a while, but never thought I’d write about it. It wasn’t until I got older and realized how ubiquitous this kind of friendship is for teenage girls that I felt like I wanted to unpack mine a bit more.

Then what I needed was some courage. I wasn’t afraid of the book being too racy – I was afraid of the earnestness I knew would be necessary to tell the story. Somehow earnestness makes me feel more vulnerable than talking frankly about sex! I convinced myself the first pages I wrote were just play; that I could throw it all out without ever showing it to anyone. That gave me the freedom I needed to explore the story however I wanted, and I found that the looseness of my drafting (jumping from tangent to tangent, allowing word play to have its way with me) helped me discover some of the motifs that became central to the story. This idea of the dancer being the truth-teller to an audience who might not want to see the truth… I didn’t plan for that thread, but it became crucial to the telling of the tale.

Is this a good place to mention the story’s heavily fictionalized? It is? Oh good.

I: Until reading What It Feels Like For a Girl, I’d never considered how much early adolescent sexuality (or at least the fixation with it) is a bookish pursuit– you mention “the real English class” with Lolita, The Happy Hooker, and even “a few pages from Danielle Steele,/ copied, folded and ready”; the girls pore over magazines (though I note, not for the articles); Madonna’s lyrics from the Bible; you reference poetry and “dead poet fantasies”; even labia are “open books”. What connections do you draw between books and sex?

JH: Books are super sexy. It’s not just me, right?

I was definitely a young reader who sought out sexy scenes in books. It was a way to learn, while anticipating what I’d one day get to do for real. I wanted to be part of it, think about it, imagine it, but didn’t really want the scary part: the bodies, the sweat, the awful sounds. I think reading about sex allowed for the perfect balance between fantasizing and maintaining some sense of mystery about the whole shebang.

I: There is much talk these days about overt sexuality in popular culture and the effect of this on young people. And yet, your book (and my own memory) makes clear that young people have always been obsessed with sex. Do you think things are different today than they were twenty years ago? Is your book relevant to modern teenage experience?

JH: I do think young people have always been obsessed with sex. I know there’s a lot of talk about how teenagers are going further faster these days. I’m sure that’s true, to a degree. But I was a 13 year old who just assumed I was the only one who didn’t really even want it yet; I thought everybody was way ahead of me, in action if not in thought. Apparently it’s still true that teenagers talk a big game and aren’t necessarily fucking willy-nilly.

What I really wanted to explore in the book is that mad desire – the desperately wanting, but also the relishing of the not-getting. Wallowing in that. It’s its own kind of satisfaction. I was reading Anne Carson when I was writing the first draft, and was affected by her thoughts about desire. Desire dies the minute you get what you want. You’ve got to enjoy the wanting. (Sincere apologies to Ms. Carson for my oversimplification…)

I do hope that delicious, painful, amazing feeling hasn’t been lost. I don’t think it has. Isn’t that largely what the Twilight madness is about? The sweet can’t-haveness?

I: “But what makes girls and boys/ see sex and want to beat it down?/ Standing in the gym you realize/ poetry has taught you nothing.” Was the medium the problem, or the poems themselves? Or the reader? Is this poetry than can teach something new?

JH: Should I ever have a book marketed to book clubs, may I hire you to write the suggested discussion questions? (I: Thank you.)

I think the problem was a little about the poems, a little about the reader. Poetry had not prepared the speaker for the particular complex problem she was facing. But maybe she just hadn’t read the right poems yet.

I: Why is/was Madonna important?

JH: I think I partly wrote the book as a means of trying to get at that very question. What interests me most about Madonna is that I’m still not sure how I feel about her. But she has certainly made me consider my own feelings about sex in the public sphere.

I: “When you are thirteen/ the world is a small room/…But it’s also a complicated room/…It’s a strange time to be a girl…”. What was your writing like when you were thirteen? What were you reading then?

JH: My poetry was terrible, but I wrote really kick-ass book reports. (I’ve actually read some recently – they hold up!) With poetry, I was trying to put on a poet’s voice (and choose poem-appropriate topics) because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. But when I read a book I liked (an example would be And I Don’t Want To Live This Life, by Nancy Spungen’s mother) and had to write critically about it, I was honestly and passionately engaged. It took years for me to discover how to take that engagement with someone else’s work and apply it to my own subject
.

I: You are a writer of great versatility– you’re a poet, a screenwriter, and you’ve also written a comic book. (Have I missed anything?) Is there anything in particular that links these things that you do? What about these modes of writing appeals to your sensibility?

JH: That covers it pretty well!

I do think there are some major links between these forms. First – they’re image-based. (Not all poetry, of course, but mine, to a large degree.) I think these forms all choose images, or scenes, to represent something much bigger than just that one moment. Images as tips-of-the-iceberg. Moments that allow the reader or viewer to fill in all sorts of gaps. Hopefully what the reader/viewer brings to those gaps is a mix of what you were thinking and what they’re bringing to the work.

They also all rely, to a degree, on economy. In screenwriting, you don’t get away with much chaff. Every moment must be part of the telling of the story, or it’ll get cut from the script before its shot – or it’ll get shot and then cut, and you’ve just wasted thirty thousand dollars. Or it doesn’t get cut even then, and audiences wonder what the hell the point of THAT scene was.

In poetry, I do find there is a revision stage in which you look at every word and wonder if it’s necessary. And if it’s necessary, is the word doing double or triple duty, really earning its place?

I: Your first and second books are very different. What is their relationship? What do they have in common?

JH: I find it difficult to make a connection too. As you have pointed out before, I think the key motif in The Octopus and Other Poems is wonder. That does apply here, too: looking at the things we as human beings explore, and why, and what that exploration costs us.

I: What do you require in your life in order to write well?

JH: I have very different needs on different days – sometimes it’s a full stomach, a clean house, and quiet. Other days the mess can pile up around me, there’s construction outside, and I’ll work hungry for six hours straight and it’s perfect. But I know I’m lucky to have enough control of my life (a husband I love, a home we love, enough money for all the essentials) to have the luxury of different needs on different days.

I: What was it like having your poem on a bus?

JH: It was very cool in theory, and very uncool in the sense that I never once saw it! In a year of my poem decorating Vancouver buses and SkyTrains while I took transit every day, I didn’t cross paths with it – though friends took photos when they saw it and sent them to me. That was nice. I also have one of the placards here in my office. That’s also nice.

I’ve just learned an excerpt from What It Feels Like for a Girl will be part of Poetry in Transit in early 2010, after the Olympics have come and gone. Wish me luck hunting it down!

I: What five poems do you think everybody should read?

JH: I never know how to do stuff like this. So without thinking about it overmuch: 1. “Supernatural Love” by Gjertrud Schnackenberg 2. “All the Desanctified Places” by Robert Bringhurst 3. “For Peter, My Cousin” by Barbara Nickel 4. “Sudden” by Michael Redhill 5. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje (I’m calling it one long poem, just because I can.)

I: Who are your favourite writers?

JH: My favourite writers are the ones I get to have nachos or burgers with. Or who come over to play Rock Band.

I: What are you reading right now?

JH: I’m reading Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean. It’s phenomenal – very accessible and yet poetic. Funnily enough, there’s a connection between that book and our conversation here. One of the main threads for Aristotle and young Alexander is the idea of balance; the “truth” that lies between two extremes, or caricatures. One of the sparks for me in writing What It Feels Like for a Girl came years ago in a lecture about pornography. There were students enraged at the medium’s exploitation of women, and there were students who felt people (including women) should do whatever they wanted with their bodies. I found myself asking the question: Is it possible – even advisable – to feel both ways about the subject? About any subject? I’m really taken with this emotional duality. Though it can be a pain when having a spirited debate… it must be very frustrating for my friends to watch me passionately not take a side!

(Author Photo by Jeff Morris)

May 22, 2009

Author Interviews@ Pickle Me This: Terry Griggs

It was one of those vivid reading experiences, the first time I read Terry Griggs. Last August, and I was sitting on a bench in a park in Elora Ontario, taking a sunny break in a lovely day’s outing. I was reading Issue 74 of Canadian Notes and Queries, the Salon Des Refuses Issue, and the story was a new one, “The Discovery of Honey”.

First line: “My parents were married in a high wind that was conceived in the tropics and born in a jet stream.” And the whole of the story seemed to be impelled by that wind, by such a tremendous energy.

In reading other stories by Terry Griggs since then, however, I have found that same energy ever-present. Coming from the words themselves, I think, her prose “a language landslide, an avalanche”. She uses language, which sounds obvious, but most writers don’t, not quite like this. Griggs’ new novel is Thought You Were Dead, her own particular take on the crime-fiction genre, and her 1990 Governor General’s Award-nominated collection of stories Quickening has just been reprinted as part of the Biblioasis Renditions Series. I’ve reviewed both books here. Terry Griggs was lovely enough to answer my questions by email from her home in Stratford Ontario.

I: What has been your experience of crime fiction? Prior to Thought You Were Dead, were you an avid reader of it? What writers and books are you most familiar with? What are your thoughts on the genre?

TG: Very little experience, really. Before starting research for Thought You Were Dead, I’d read maybe two or three mysteries. But at some point I became interested in the form and intrigued with its popularity, especially among readers who would not otherwise read genre fiction. I’m an Eng Lit grad, so for the longest time the only kind of work I read was literary. Not a lit-snob, just didn’t know any better, thought that’s where the good stuff was. And it is, of course, but certainly not all. I still think of literature as being in two categories, although for me it’s no longer the literary/ popular fiction divide, but basically what appeals and what doesn’t. Some books fulfill my reading needs and desires and others don’t—it’s as simple as that. I find this a satisfying re-arrangement of priorities and one that opens up the field.

As for books: I discovered Ian Rankin’s Rebus series early on and followed along —to think that his publishers had wanted to dump him at one point before he hit the big time! I’ve read all of P.D. James and Martha Grimes, most of Elizabeth George, and sampled many others.
Kate Atkinson I’ve always liked, and she’s written some mysteries of late (although I believe she doesn’t call them that). Haven’t delved much into the oldie-goldies yet, I confess, although Dan Wells, my publisher has just sent me a copy of Chandler’s The Little Sister.

I: What did you learn about crime fiction while writing this novel? Though you’ve constructed a send-up of the genre, you’re still working within the formula. How was this experience different from your previous writing?

TG: I feel that I’ve always written mysteries, just not the kind that come with the sort of conventions that need to receive at least a nod as one is passing through. And literary does have its own formulas, perhaps less obvious ones. I found the genre to be a fair bit of fun, the form flexible enough to sustain a bit of larky handling. Although this book comes out as a send-up, it’s really just creative play and me inhabiting the genre in my particular, albeit subversive, way, making it my own, leaving my thumb print (evidence!). Plot is perhaps more easily traceable in Thought You Were Dead than in some of my other works, although I’ve never considered it a lesser element. I want to be a good storyteller.

I: I’m always interested in how writers name their characters, and names do seem to be a preoccupation in your work. Most particular, from where did you unearth a name like “Chellis Beith”?

TG: You’re right about the preoccupation. The other night at a reading I was asked about where I’d found the name Chellis, and if I recall, I encountered it in my reading somewhere, possibly in a magazine. I tend to collect names, and sometimes suffer from name-envy if I run across a good one. Someone once told me that they’d named their daughter after a celeb’s kid that they read about in People or Cosmopolitan, I forget which, and I found this proud admission a wee bit sad (okay maybe I am a snob). So in Thought You Were Dead this is how Chel’s mother discovers his name, reading a trashy magazine while waiting in line at the grocery store. Here’s something funny, though: Chellis is an unusual name, but I did run across it again recently in The New Yorker. A woman called Chellis Glendinning has written a book, perhaps it’s an article, entitled “My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization,” which sounds exactly like something my character would write.

Now, his last name is actually borrowed from the town in Scotland where my own ancestral family came from before moving to Glasgow way back when. There’s a quiet little network of Scottish stuff in the book and Beith is one of many.

And, by the way, you have a very interesting name—two Irish counties. Wouldn’t mind hearing the story behind that.

I: The novel is packed with details, detritus from Chellis’ work as a literary researcher. (“The number of bones in the face (fourteen), the name of Sir Isaac Newton’s dog (Diamond)…”) Where did you get all this stuff? Had been saving it? Was it gathered specifically for this project? Do you require this kind of background yourself before you start writing, or can you just sit down with a blank page and go?

TG: Along with the names, I do collect these bits and bobs, often keeping them around for a long time before using them, if I use them at all. I’m not an info junkie, I don’t go scouring, but I find odd bits of information delightful. These sorts of details are telling. A small colourful fact can sharpen focus, or cast an object or subject in a different, more vital light. A sma
ll “fact” even plays a significant part in the book. It’s much easier to find these now with Google, but what you mention I discovered in my own reference books. No, I don’t face the blank page without doing some foraging beforehand, finds which go into a notebook. Usually a couple of notebooks—one for straight research—for Thought You Were Dead, I checked out women inventors and genealogy, among other things—and one for words, ideas, proto-conversations, wordplay, chapter titles, whatever might seem useful.

I: I loved your listing of Chellis and Elaine’s formative reading:. “Mad Magazine, or Archie comics, or PG Wodehouse, and she reading Popular Mechanics, Richie Rich comics, or Virginia Woolf.” Was your formative reading so diverse? What kind of thing did you spend summer afternoons reading out on your porch?

TG: You know, I wasn’t a devoted reader. Or at least reading didn’t occupy a large part of my time, as it does with true bookworms. I did read those comics, piles of them, and the Alice books repeatedly, and Enid Blyton’s adventure series, other stuff long forgotten. Most of the classic children’s books I didn’t read until I was a young adult, and now do read fairly widely, but I have to say I’ve never tackled Popular Mechanics.

I: Chellis notes that “Fiction filtered so surreptitiously into everyday life that you had to keep your eye on it. But not banish it altogether. That would be too too boring. Besides, it was so useful.” Has this been true in your own experience? Whether as a writer or simply a person living an everyday life? And would you, like Chellis’ employer, be annoyed at the terms “fiction” and “falsehood” used interchangeably?

TG: Well, you think of your own family stories, or anecdotes of daily happenings, the rendering of which often enjoy improving tweaks—fiction is a great assist in making life more interesting. It gives a finer, improved shape to conversation. Not that it isn’t true. That trip to the dentist may simply become a funnier, more artfully delivered report—you mine the situation for its subtext, or its less obvious charms. We’re story-telling animals, after all. Falsehood strikes me as being more intentional, purposely deceptive. Fiction transposes life into art, whereas lies are all craft.

I: I’ve thought a lot about how an author is meant to approach her readership, particularly because so many readers demand a pretty immediate kind of satisfaction from a book or a story. But in your foreword to Quickening, you suggest that any satisfaction seemingly withheld might just require the reader to work a bit harder. “If the gist of any particular effort here seems overly elusive, a reader might need to venture in like a beater and drive out the game.” This is a provocative stance to take, to make the reader work as hard as you do. Should reading not be entertainment, a kind of leisure? What are your thoughts on this?

TG: I love the idea of being provocative, but that was actually said as a kind of courtesy. I’ve been given the impression that the stories can be tricky, not immediate, as you say. Can’t see it myself. An attentive reader is all that’s required. So, the statement is just me acknowledging that people bring other reading experiences to a story and perhaps mine may potentially cause a bit of head-scratching. I do think a reading workout is a good thing, forging new neural pathways, etc., but I also believe that entertainment and pleasure are the main reasons for reading. Some of us are just entertained by more tangled offerings.

I: “A language landslide. An avalanche, out the words tumble slam bang, and razzle dazzle.” This from your story “Suddenly”, whose character’s words seem to “put on disguises before sneaking out of [her] mouth.” “Language landslide” or “avalanche” could also qualify as a description of your own prose. But does it really flow so easily from your pen?

TG: Slowly. I write sloooowwwly. Fuss fuss fuss. But this is the interesting thing. The result, or so I’m told, has zip, a certain energy. Words are alive, after all, and possibly I’ve been able to align them in such a way that enables them take off at a real clip.

I: Your story “The Man with the Axe” is much about the creation of fiction. “Two women talking, that’s all it took to spark a birth, a genesis, to entice someone out of the shadows.” Is this your experience? Where else does fiction come from?

TG: From the basement. Martin Amis says that writing comes from the back of the mind “where thoughts are unformulated and anxiety is silent.” The genesis does often seem mysterious, although yes, in my experience it doesn’t take too much to spark something—an image, a word, an expression, even a cliché. (The other day out walking I overheard a woman say to a man, presumably her husband, “I hate to tell you this . . . ” Didn’t catch the rest, but don’t need to—I could happily supply it, probably something he’d really hate to hear.)

I: As a writer for whom language is so important, “finding the exact place the words met events”, it is remarkable that you so often take on the point of view of characters without language— the dogs, the babies, the fetuses. What is the appeal in this for you? Is it the challenge? And how do you find the right words to match such characters’ experiences?

TG: Looking over some of what I’ve written, there appears to be two categories of the speechless. Or near speechless. Those who use language stupidly, cruelly, more as a weapon, and those, you mention, who are invested with emotion and smarts, but can’t express it. I’ve never analysed why I do this, but I assume it’s some presentation of how rich the medium—language—is, how difficult the access at times, or how easily abused. I’ve always been happy to grant sensibility to, well, just about anything. In the kids’ books it’s a fountain pen named Murray Sheaffer. Am a generous dispenser of human goods (and bads). Perhaps I’m a pantheist. People do this sort of thing with their pets all the time, I expect. You interpret a look or a quality and put words in the dog’s mouth to match. The cat says wonderfully astute or affectionate things to you in a cute voice you ascribe to her, whereas what she’s really thinking is how you’d be a tasty little snack if only you were more her size.

I: What are your preoccupations as a writer? Are these different than they used to be?

TG: My main concern is simply to write well, to improve, to keep things lively, and to have a good time doing it. All that has been consistent from the beginning. My fascination with language itself continues, and some subjects keep coming up: the male/female divide, what used to be called the battle of the sexes, and ambiguity—people in situations that they both want and don’t want.

I: Who are your favourite writers? What are your favourite books?

TG: I like the stylists mainly, and poets. So just off the top of my head: Vladimir Nabokov, Eric Ormsby, Hilary Mantel (new book out soon), Beryl Bainbridge, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Diane Johnson, Julian Barnes, Rose Tremain, Flann O’Brien, Martin Amis, Eva Ibbotson . . . oh lots lots.

I: And finally, what are you reading right now?

TG: I just finished a marvelous book, YA, called The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti. I’m re-reading Little Dorrit. Dickens can wield a sentence most fantastically—away they go. The Letters of Ted Hughes. The letters to his son heartbreaking in retrospect. The whole deal heartbreaking, but the book excellent. I’m going to have a look at A. S. Byatt’s new one, although, like you, her sister is more my cup of tea. Yikes, shouldn’t perhaps mention tea in their company…

March 31, 2009

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Jessica Westhead

I wanted to be friends with Jessica Westhead from the moment I met her, which was at a writing workshop for high school students we both participated in last May. Afterwards we walked down Spadina in the sunshine, and I was so impressed by her warmth, enthusiasm, her kindness and generosity. Over the past year, we’ve kept in touch, and I’ve been recommending her novel Pulpy & Midge to friends and family, and I also had the pleasure of hearing her read from her short stories at Pivot this winter.

On the rainy afternoon of Sunday March 29, Jessica came over to my house for tea and scones, and we sat in my kitchen discussing Whitby and Peterborough, our infinitely loveable husbands, literary people we adore, and the many joys of two-storey apartments. And by the time we’d moved into the living room to start the interview proper, the sun had come back out.

I: You write stunning dialogue. How do you get the rhythms down, and are you an eavesdropper?

JW: I am totally an eavesdropper. This is less about dialogue and more about me observing, but I remember years ago, [my husband] Derek and I went to Licks for Valentines Day—very romantic of us, heehee. We were in line and this couple came in and sat down in front of us, and the guy got up to go to the bathroom and the woman was alone there at the table. I need glasses for distance, and when I’m not wearing them and people are far away from me, I always think I’m just as blurry to them as they are to me. So a few seconds later, Derek had to say, “You’re totally staring at that person.” But I was just intrigued by the woman and what she would do when she was by herself. That’s the voyeuristic side of me.

The eavesdropping side is that I’m always listening to people talk. I used to be more interested in the content of what they were saying, if they were saying something really interesting or exciting, but over the years it’s gotten to be more about the rhythm, and what’s not being said. I really like people talking about nothing and how they—what I’m doing right now, fragments of sentences and I’m not speaking in complete thoughts, and I’m all over the place, and that’s how people really speak to each other. And I think dialogue rings false when people try to make it sound really fully formed.

I: What’s the most remarkable thing you’ve ever overheard?

JW: The first thing that comes to mind, I turned into a short story, which was one of my only short stories that was all dialogue and actually worked. It was two girls on a GO Train. I was on my way to Whitby and they were sitting behind me. And I never actually saw them, I only heard their voices, and how they talked—it was brilliant. Just the teenage voices they were using. I pieced together what happened just from their dialogue. They’d gotten into a car accident the night before, and I think it was a speed-racing accident and they were just talking like, “Oh, my God, we just got in a car accident.” “We almost fucking died—that was huge.” “What are you gonna tell your mom?” “I’m not gonna tell my mom shit…” and it was all this stuff that came out about their families, and their friends, and I was furiously scribbling down what they were saying, and then I got scared because I thought they were these big scary girls who’d see I was writing about them and beat me up.

I: Teenagers are frightening.

JW: Yes, I got a little skittish.

I: Your novel Pulpy & Midge has been compared to The Office and Dilbert—a television show and a comic strip. What do you think of these comparisons?

JW: I think having it compared to The Office is definitely complimentary on the one hand because it’s a brilliant show, but when that first came up I was a little annoyed because I started writing Pulpy & Midge way before I ever saw The Office. But then of course everything is influenced by everything else.

I: They probably got The Office from Pulpy & Midge.

JW: Of course! I’m totally convinced and have a lawsuit in progress, haha… But I don’t think the comparisons are trivializing. I mean, just because the book is funny and set in an office, that’s why those comparisons were made, and just because Dilbert is shy. My characters are cartoonish but I like to think they have different layers as well. Pulpy and Midge are the more complex ones, but I tried to write Dan and Beatrice to be a little bit sympathetic as well. And the receptionist, who is sympathetic but mean to Pulpy at the same time. Some people have said she’s their favourite character in the book because she has all these different layers.

I: And she’s such a receptionist. She misses parties because she has to cover the desk—

JW: So unfair.

I: And she’s constantly put-upon, because she has to buy cards and flowers and cakes, and has to be the eyes and ears of the place, and it’s a lot of weight on her shoulders.

JW: I started writing the book—and this is the answer to the “Have you ever worked in an office?” question—when I was an unhappy receptionist. It was my first real job, and I’d applied for it, I’d got it and I was getting something like $20,000 a year, and I thought that was incredible. But I quite quickly started seeing that people were mean at this company, and treated each other badly, and abused power, but I also like that people would just have whole conversations in front of me, like I was a piece of furniture. I got all sorts of ideas from it.

I: You’d also have a computer to write on, and lots of free time, as long as no one’s looking at your screen.

JW: And no one really did. It was a great job for that.

I: But in some ways the comic comparison is understandable. Any workplace comes to take on the same dimensions, in that the petty is magnified, politicized. Minute details take on enormous significance. What about this environment seemed ripe to you for fictionalization?

JW: Before I had this book published, someone asked what I thought the book was about, and I said, “Well, it’s about how it’s not nice to be mean to people” and they said, “That’s not a great catchphrase.” But there just seems to be so much meanness, and there’s no good reason for it except abuse of power—in this workplace in particular, but I’ve worked in so many offices over the years as a temp, where you’re also in a neutral position where people treat you badly because you’re a temp, but they’ll also tell you all kinds of stuff about other people because you’re not threatening. And so I think I took away the cartoonish aspect of mean people who are lording over the peons.

I: There is a language peculiar to office life that you make use of in Pulpy & Midge—slogans on mugs, and kitten posters hanging in cubicles with “Thank God It’s Friday,” and corporate bullshit that means nothing. What was your experience of putting this into prose?

JW: It was fun. Actually, the naming of the mugs was a very good time.

I: Did the mug have drafts?

JW: We
ll, the duck mug came from my time as a receptionist. It wasn’t exactly my mug, but I just remember loving it, and loving those types of mugs that people have. They’re little talismans which are so important, and you only have so many boundaries at an office, and so when someone crosses them, it’s a big deal. And I just remember this stupid mug with the cartoon duck, and I’d written the exact wording down years ago—“Not another crisis! My schedule’s full!!” And it’s so stereotypical of how a receptionist is, but kind of true. The other mug ideas were just made up, and they came to me pretty quickly. It was fun.

I: At one point the receptionist says, “Work and home… That’s all there is. I get up, I go to work, I go home. Repeat.” And Pulpy tells her, “We all do the same thing.” Which is sort of depressing, particularly when you realize how many of us actually do. For your characters, and for everyone, what is the alternative to this?

JW: At the end of Pulpy & Midge, some people thought, “Oh, Pulpy should just blow everybody away,” or “Blow up the office,” or something crazy and violent like that. Other people thought that he should leave the job, and in earlier drafts, I think he was going to. The ending is very quiet, but Pulpy is a quiet person, and his actually touching Dan and telling him to leave him alone, and to leave his wife alone—that fits his trajectory. But also you know he’s going to work the next day, or the next Monday, and he’ll have to see Dan again, but things are going to be different.

Not everyone can just quit their job and pursue something else, but still, every time someone quits a job that they don’t like, my first response is to hoot and holler and be very excited for them—but some people aren’t in a position to be able to do that, and we’re very lucky, those of us who can. But I think just being able to carve out your own niche at a job is important. It’s about being able to make it as good as possible for yourself and not letting other people walk over you. Pulpy has a victory because he likes the job, but he’s been so miserable with his new boss, so he finally takes a stand. These small victories matter.

I: Every day at lunchtime, Pulpy goes to the payphones at the food court to call his wife. He is ever-devoted, but the system isn’t convenient—he has to wait for the phone, he ends up spilling food on himself, he has to contend with teenagers taking up multiple payphones for “conference calls.” I want to know, why didn’t you give Pulpy a cellphone, the great modern fiction writer’s pass for easy plot twists? What does it mean about Pulpy as a character that he doesn’t have one?

JW: I think it says a lot about him that he will not make a personal call at work, and clearly this is something he’d established before Dan came on the scene. It’s not just his fear of authority, but he has a strict work ethic, and personal calls aren’t appropriate, but Midge is important to him, and he prioritizes her. And I love the idea of him having to talk to her on a payphone. Cellphones are so ubiquitous now, and it would be easier if he had one, but I see Pulpy and Midge as relics of a slightly earlier time. They’re innocent and they don’t have to jump on bandwagons. He’d still have to leave the office to use his cellphone anyway.

I: I think there is only one instance in the whole novel where Pulpy is actually working. With this, what are you trying to say about modern corporate culture?

JW: Really, that’s been my experience. The office jobs I’ve worked in, the temp jobs, it’s the feeling of literally filling a seat from 9 to 5. I learned over the years that to be a good temp, you don’t ask people for work, because they’re too busy, or they’re too busy trying to look busy. They don’t want you to realize that they’re doing nothing all day. For jobs like this where you’re just paying the bills, the work really wasn’t the point. The social side meant more. These are people you spent more time with than you do with your family, and I just thought that was really interesting—especially when you’re just a cog in the wheel.

I: Pulpy’s boss, Dan says, “Oh, the joy of it… Of this! Of me and you, here, doing work. Doing our jobs. If it wasn’t for men like us, being in offices, accomplishing things, then where would we be?” Can you answer his question, Jessica? Where would we be?

JW: Well, of course that’s just bullshit. But I did wonder how I was making money at these jobs, because they were so easy, so pointless. And I think there are people—some great people, some strange people—who like that type of work where you don’t necessarily have a point. But at least you have a place to go every day, people to see, a seat to fill, so I think while there’s a lot of people doing those jobs who can’t stand it, some people don’t want to do anything else.

I: But those people maintain this illusion that anything is actually going on.

JW: And they’re terrified that somebody’s going to expose them. But there is a point to it all, I guess. It’s commerce, like Dan says.

I: You’ve written a comic novel. Do you take humour seriously?

JW: It’s funny, because I get freaked out when people call my work funny. I should be flattered, but especially, it was the comparison to The Office, and I panicked because, I think of people going to comedy shows, and there’s always that guy sitting there going, “Oh, yeah—you’re funny? Make me laugh, funny man.” And so, especially when I do readings, I’m afraid someone is going to introduce me as “Comic Writer, Jessica Westhead!” because I don’t think of myself that way, and then there’s that expectation. I think of myself as writing literary fiction that has some humour and some sadness. I just want people to not know what to expect, though I guess eventually as you publish more books and get some sort of reputation, people end up pigeonholing you in certain ways.

But the funny I like—like the humour in Lorrie Moore who’s one of my favourite writers—though I didn’t actually discover her until I was done Pulpy & Midge—it’s a lot of darkness and sad stuff, but I don’t think you can have one without the other. So I think when people talk about humorous writers, like Lynn Coady, who’s a really great writer and she writes a lot of funny stuff—

I: Mean Boy is so good!

JW: Mean Boy is wonderful. But it’s not just budda-bing, joke-joke, punchline. We laugh because the humour is so organic to the piece and that’s what I really hope happens in my writing. The humour that I like comes out of uncomfortable social situations, which in Pulpy & Midge is all over the place, and in my short fiction I address that too. I’m just happy when I can make myself laugh, but that’s only when I’m really in the writing. It has to come naturally, because if you set out to write something funny, 90% of the time it fails. It has to grow out of the piece.

I: Is humour taken seriously by the literary establishment?

JW- I don’t think so. I was reading somewhere about Douglas Coupland, how it’s like he’s in a separate canon because he writes funny. He’s won awards, but he gets awards in different categories. Like how at the Oscars, comedies almost never win, and I don’t understand that, because writing humour is quite difficult.

I: Who are some other comic writers, however dark, that you like?

JW: Definitely George Saunders, who’s amazing. I really like Russell Smith’s writing, and he gives great readings as well. My friend Sarah Selecky, who’s got a book of short stories coming out in Spring 2010 with Thomas Allen. I’ve been friends with her for a long time and her stories are great, with these sparkling moments of humour that are so organic. And Meg Wolitzer, who’s a wonderful storyteller. Like Lorrie Moore, I wouldn’t say she’s a “comic writer,” but those are the writers I like. George Saunders isn’t comic either, he’s literary, but so much of his stuff is funny. It’s almost like when someone says someone is a comic writer, it just limits them somehow, which is strange. It’s writing with humour in it—I like to think that about my stuff as opposed to it being comic.

I: What are your fixations as a writer? What do you deal with over and over again?

JW: Well, definitely dialogue. I love writing it, and I love the way that people speak. Peter Darbyshire, whose writing I like a lot, years ago read one of my short stories and he took time to meet with me for lunch and he very kindly told me, “You write really great domestic dialogue, but there’s nothing in between. You’ve got to think about what’s between the lines.” And now that’s what I really try to do. Of course you can have the most banal dialogue, and it’s funny because it’s banal, but there has to be something going on beneath the surface. So it’s trying to guess someone’s story when I’m listening to them speak, and the pauses or stuff they don’t say, and of course it’s just me inserting my own ideas, but that’s what I love about dialogue.

I’m also fascinated by—and it’s pretty clear from Pulpy—shy, quiet characters who require a massive effort to speak up for themselves. I used to be really shy in high school and I’m more outgoing now, but I’m fascinated with how I used to be. But I also have a lot of sympathy for people who are introverted and shy because I’m still that way lots of the time. Shy people, quiet people, insecure people, I definitely keep going back to that. The humour of awkward social situations, how you get out of them and deal with them.

I: How do you name your characters?

JW: The name Pulpy was just such a gift—I have no idea where it came from. It began in a very short story where Pulpy and Midge were at an office party, and it was bizarre, they were different characters, but the essence was still there. She had earrings, and she’d spiked cocktail shrimp onto her ears and had Pulpy eat them off, which was strange, and Pulpy was always Pulpy and Midge was always Midge. Dan and Beatrice also, but they came later.

Right now I have a basic outline of a character and it keeps coming to me in fits and starts but the worst part is I don’t know the name, so it’s not really born in my head yet. The name is very important to me. I know people who can just make up a name and then switch it later on, but I’m just hesitant about that. I once named the character in an early idea for a story and it died right away because that just wasn’t who she is. Sometimes what I do—you know when you get spam in your inbox? I get inspired by the random names that come in. And I go to baby-name websites for ideas. I get more confident if I have a name, and if it isn’t right, it just nags me.

I: What writers were your early influences, and how have your tastes in literature changed since then?

JW: I actually remember pretty vividly, my dad who’s a retired English teacher, getting exasperated with me because I used to read Sweet Valley High, Dean R. Koontz, and Stephen King but…

I: He’s literary now.

JW: Exactly. And Flowers in the Attic. I feel like I squandered years reading this useless stuff, but they were page-turners. I certainly don’t think they were influences, but they were fun to read. Over the years I’ve discovered authors that friends have suggested to me, but that’s what first comes to mind. I also think of Gordon Korman, and Eric Wilson. I loved the Eric Wilson mysteries.

I: I joined his club! I used to get his newsletters. With that brother and sister who solved mysteries at Canadian landmarks. Murder at Green Gables—I think that was one.

JW: I don’t have that one, but I have The Kootenay Kidnapper!

I: When did writing become a major occupation for you?

JW: Well, I’ve always written stories. It’s kind of exciting but also terrifying to know what you want to be since you were a kid, but I always wanted to write. When I was little I sold homemade books instead of lemonade on my front lawn. And I was always lucky in public school and high school to have teachers who took an interest in my writing.

I always thought writing was what I’d do. I didn’t know how I’d go about it, but both my parents were supportive, and never said I couldn’t do it. Even though my dad is more the reader in the family, reading my stories and critiquing them, my mom would seek out writing workshops or events for me. And she introduced me to my friend Jim Munroe, who taught me a lot about writing and the small-press scene, and I joined a writing group with him when I first moved to Toronto. I was in high school when I met him—my mom was working as a court reporter with Jim’s stepmom, and they made the connection that we were both writers and put us in touch.

I had some stories published when I was young, and in university, but university for me was more about having fun, not being serious about writing. I was really nerdy in high school, and then I got to university and I thought, “I’m going to have fun!” (but I still managed to get good marks, luckily). But I just thought writing would happen, and then I realized that I’d have to work at it. Jim introduced me to a lot of great Toronto literary people, and I remember going to literary events and launches with him and being so intimidated—not that I’m never intimidated now, but I guess less so than I was. So I came to understand that this was part of it—going to these events, supporting people, getting to know other writers and being part of a community. And without that introduction, it would have taken me longer to figure that out.

And also to understand that it’s about more than having random stories published. You have to have a plan, so it was about a year after I moved to Toronto in 1998 that I decided I was going to do this, and around the same time I quit this receptionist job and decided to start temping. I realized I couldn’t work at a full-time job, so I had to find a way to support myself doing part-time work, or do full-time work for a certain amount of time, quit, take time off to write and then find another job. Which worked for a while, until I started freelance editing, which has been great. But I just knew that if I didn’t make time for the writing, I wouldn’t do it. I wasn’t the kind of person who could work at a full-time job and make time for writing in the morning or at the end of the day. I’m just not disciplined enough.

I: What was the leap from short stories to a novel like? Was a novel a logical extension
or was it something altogether different?

JW: I think what reassures me now, since I’m not sure what my next story is going to be but I think it’s going to be a novel, is that with the first draft of Pulpy & Midge, I never even considered it a draft. I just had these ideas based around Pulpy and Midge, and the receptionist who was very strong, but she was in a separate story and then I joined them. I made this skeleton manuscript from all of these connected ideas and ended up having 90 pages or something, so that was, in hindsight, the first draft.

Alana Wilcox, who was my editor at Coach House and incredible—she read a much later draft, of course—and she pointed out that it was structured like: Pulpy wakes up and talks to Midge, Pulpy takes the bus to work, Pulpy talks to the receptionist, Pulpy goes to his desk, talks to Dan and Beatrice, has problems, goes home, talks to Midge. Repeat the next day. That was it, and thank God for Alana, because she took it from 300-something pages down to 220 or 230, and I never thought I could lose that much material. But she said, “You needed that structure as a scaffold to help you build the novel, and now that you know the story, when you go through it again, all that unnecessary stuff will fall away.” And she gave me the confidence to go through it, and she was right.

The jump to novel-writing didn’t feel like a logical extension, though. I mean, it didn’t feel forced, because I was confident in the characters, but the next (second) draft was very flat. There was really no plot arc at all. And I know the plot arc now is not huge, but something still moves the story along. Plot didn’t come naturally to me, though. It’s getting easier now, but for a short story all you need is a moment, or a few moments, and a novel needs a series of events, and a beginning, middle, and end. But I had this structure that was scene-oriented, scene-driven, and I think probably my next novel will be too because that’s how I write. I had to write in these little bits, sections, for it to be able to flow. And it was quite exciting when I realized I could cut the scenes that didn’t matter, but I needed to write them initially to get the novel into being.

I: What book would you recommend every fiction writer to have read?

JW: I have an answer to that! Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. It’s amazing. I read it when I was halfway through Pulpy & Midge, and it talks about the craft of fiction in an accessible way, and gives great examples using some of my favourite writers.

I: What are you reading right now?

JW: I’m reading Elizabeth Ruth’s first book, Ten Good Seconds of Silence, and I’m really enjoying it. I’m also having fun reading Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino and illustrated by Evan Munday, who is the publicist extraordinaire and all-around good guy at Coach House. And I just finished reading Fruit by Brian Francis, which I loved.

December 12, 2008

The fullest possible reckoning

“Along the way, during the editing process, or at least before the interview finally goes to press, the writer who has been interviewed is given the text to review and revise. This collaborative approach to the final product is unapologetically at odds with journalistic practice, where it is presumed that the reporter’s accuracy depends on strict independence from the subject’s influence. The Paris Review‘s purpose is not to catch writers off guard, but to elicit from them the fullest possible reckoning of what interests them most– their lives and work as writers, who they are and what they do all day. A few Paris Review interviews were accomplished in a single sitting, but it is far more common for them to be conducted over several seasons, even several years, with multiple sessions in person and many rounds of written correspondence as well.” –Philip Gourevitch, “Introduction”, The Paris Review Interviews, I

November 12, 2008

Author Interview @ Pickle Me This: Tricia Dower

Silent Girl, the debut short story collection by Tricia Dower, doesn’t so much address issues as raise questions and open up dialogues. The book’s structure is remarkable– each story inspired by a woman from one of Shakespeare’s plays, and addressing various modern day women’s issues. I came away from Silent Girl intrigued, and bursting with a variety of urgent questions, and so I am pleased that Tricia Dower took the time to answer them for me. She was in touch via email from her home in Victoria, BC.

I: Though the stories in Silent Girl show such a broad range of styles, narrative voices and subject matter, their focus on women’s experiences and common origins from Shakespeare’s plays suggest they were always intended to be collected together. Was this the case? What came first, the book or the stories?

TD: The stories came first — a creative exercise to see how many contemporary counterparts to Shakespeare characters I could find. It was a feminist exercise, as well: how far had we come or not since Shakespeare’s day? After the fourth story, I started to think I might have a book.

I: From your “Afterward”, I understand that you started your stories with the Shakespearean reference, then sought a modern-day counterpart. Was this step in-between difficult? How hard was it to go from The Taming of the Shrew‘s Katherina, for example, to your Kyal in “Kesh Kumay” (who is a young woman in Kyrgyzstan who is kidnapped and forced into marriage)? Did you have false starts? In order to determine if the story had legs, did you find actual writing or research was more important?

TD: The step in between was relatively easy for the stories in which I found a theme common to the plays and a modern-day situation. Marriage is a financial transaction in both The Taming of the Shrew and “Kesh Kumay,” social isolation influences events in both Othello and “Nobody; I Myself,” illusion plays a role in both The Winter’s Tale and “Deep Dark Waves,” and the boundaries of gender are fluid in both Twelfth Night and “Cocktails with Charles.” For other stories, questions I had about Shakespeare’s characters led me to contemporary scenarios. Take Hamlet’s Gertrude, for example. I had always been curious about what was behind her hasty marriage to her husband’s brother. Another is Marina in Pericles: if you’re kidnapped by pirates and sold to a brothel, would you really be able to talk yourself out of sex? Or, why might Hermione, in The Winter’s Tale, want to reconcile with a husband who had abused her and left their daughter to die?

I had a significant false start with the last story, “The Snow People.” Intrigued by the atypical mothering of Volumnia in Coriolanus, I had planned to write a story about gangs in Los Angeles. My story’s mother would by atypical in that she’d rejoice in her son’s gang leadership rather than be afraid for him. I read first hand accounts of gang life by members of the Crips and the Bloods, two of the largest LA gangs, and immersed myself in other aspects of gang culture. What I learned was so discouraging I could not bring myself to fashion a story around it. Before drug trafficking and automatic weapons took over, the gangs might have had noble goals but, today, they seem doomed to commit self-genocide. So I abandoned my original idea and imagined a fictitious oppressed people struggling for self-determination in an environmentally damaged future.

Research was equally as important as writing for several stories. Especially so for the title story, because I knew very little about sex trafficking and not as much as I needed to about the tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina. Without research I couldn’t have written “Kesh Kumay,” since I’ve never been to Kyrgyzstan. Although “The Snow People” is set in the future, research into ancient arctic cultures, including the Ainu of Japan, helped me create a history and culture for my imaginary Snows. I must admit I like research as much as or more than writing. I love learning something new. If a story doesn’t get published, I don’t feel that I’ve failed or wasted my time if I’ve learned something.

I: What were your research methods in writing Silent Girl? Which, usually, would be sort of a boring question, but the diversity of your themes is quite remarkable, as is the extensiveness of your details, so I would like to know.

TD: I used books and articles in the library and on the Internet, films and photos, discussions with people, and first hand experience to research the stories. I read up on mad cow disease and visited a ranch for “Passing Through.” For “Nobody; I Myself,” I read books written in the ‘60s, so I could remind myself of the attitudes and language we used back then in reference to civil rights. For “Kesh Kumay,” I read everything I could about the country, especially personal accounts of everyday experiences so readers could believe in my setting and my characters. I also watched a documentary and read government and NGO reports about bride kidnapping. I read Kyrgyz fiction, including large sections of the epic poem, The Manas. My research took so many months, friends would say, “Are you still working on that story?”

I: It is a credit to your skill, I think, that nearly every story in Silent Girl might read as though it was written by a different writer. You use such a broad range of voices, of styles. Whereas so many writers will discover their niche and stay there. Do you aspire to be the kind of writer who doesn’t? In what kinds of stories do you find you’re most comfortable? Are there any narrative situations you’ve found you’d rather avoid?

TD: I’m so pleased you observed those differences in style and voice. I don’t know that I aspire to write that way over any other way. I just find it interesting to get into the heads of my characters and describe their worlds as they would — with varying pacing, word choice, attitude, setting, and so forth.

I seem to gravitate to stories about people struggling with something BIG. I can write the occasionally amusing line, but I can’t see myself authoring a comic novel. I don’t do funny well. I envy people who do.

I: Along those lines, characters in your stories employ a variety of dialects, dialect being an ambitious task for a writer to take on. What was your experience of writing it?

TD: I need to “hear” characters before I can portray them fully. Understand their language before I can reflect their thoughts and beliefs, history and culture. Charles’s stuttering in “Cocktails with Charles” and Maw-Maw’s Cajun accent in “Silent Girl” were the most challenging. I wanted to be respectful toward the way they speak and present the flavour of that speech without exhausting readers. I grew up listening to black radio in New Jersey and it was relatively easy for me to hear both Joe and Brother D (and the differences in the way they sp
oke) in “Nobody; I Myself.” Listening to my Alberta farm-born husband over the twenty years we’ve been together gave me Jack’s voice in “Passing Through.”

I: You started writing later in your life– what in your earlier experiences made you the writer you are today? What might have led you to write a singular collection such as Silent Girl?

TD: Living all these years as a woman, I suppose, through courtship and marriage, childbirth and divorce, having a paying job and not having one. Experiencing the many ways women have been socialized to think of themselves as inferior men. I think I felt compelled to explore, through this collection, the effect of patriarchal values on society as a way to help free myself from those values and move on. There was something cathartic in using my decades-old textbook as reference and finally noticing that the female characters are listed following the male characters before each play, no matter how big a role they play. Even Cleopatra comes after her male attendants.

I: In the story “Deep Dark Waves”, you write of a woman who is complicit in the violence committed against her by her husband. What are the implications of her complicity? How does your story complicate how we’ve come to understand domestic violence, and why do you think this complication is important?

TD: I intended to write about the more typical domestic abuse situation in which the man is the sole aggressor. But in my research I came across less common cases of women who are attracted to and often sexually addicted to violence. Because female violence doesn’t fit the typical profile, there are few services available to violence-prone women and their families. And it isn’t politically correct in some circles to even admit that women can be violent. I found the less typical situation to be more interesting to write about.

I: Your stories do challenge roles women have traditionally played in stories, one of them “Nobody; I Myself” beginning with the line, “I am not a victim. You’re not to feel sorry for me.” Why was this distinction important for you to address?

TD: Those lines uniquely characterize the narrator in that story — my Desdemona. She sees herself as an activist, breaking new ground in the fight against racial discrimination by marrying a black man and trying to help him succeed, according to her definition of success. She doesn’t want to be pitied, wants to be remembered as having consciously martyred herself for her husband. It was important for me to acknowledge that some people we view as victims don’t see themselves that way.

I: As much as some stories do challenge women’s roles, however, others such as “Not Meant to Know” and “Passing Through” demonstrate the limitations of women’s experiences. In the former story, each female character plays a subordinate role to the men in her life, and Trudy in the latter story faces a lack of acknowledgment from the men all around her. Are these characters victims? Are we to feel sorry for them?

TD: In “Not Meant to Know,” the girls are victims because they are children. However, through Tereza’s defiance and Linda’s assertion of her independence at the end of the story, I’m suggesting they could grow up to be women who take responsibility for their happiness. You might feel sorry for their mothers who seem to be powerless, but you don’t have to admire their acceptance of that powerlessness, considering its effect on their daughters.

In “Passing Through,” I wanted to show how a woman’s desire for self-actualization can have negative consequences for her relationships with the men in her life. To avoid becoming a victim, she may have tough choices to make. The last line of the story hints at the struggle it will be for Trudy to choose the role she wants for herself over the role her son would like her to play.

I: You write, “It became apparent to me… that things haven’t changed for women since Shakespeare’s time… We need different kinds of stories– a new mythology perhaps– to free us.” If that new mythology is necessary then, why start with Shakespeare at all? Are your stories the past or the future, or a step in between?

TD: What a great question! It didn’t occur to me that we needed a new mythology until I’d finished writing the stories and had the chance to look at what they said in their entirety. In rediscovering Shakespeare for this collection, it struck me that many of his female characters have the symbolic force of the qualities they represent, qualities that were thought to be either particularly desirable in a woman back then or particularly odious. Marina: chastity. Desdemona and Hermione: stand-by-your-man-even-if-he-abuses-you love. Kate: defiance. The fact that they are presented through such a lens was strangely liberating for me. My imagination could enter their world knowing that Shakespeare had left much of their nature unexplored. They could be transformed from what they might have represented in Shakespeare’s time into what they might represent today. For example, is my Desdemona a model of selfless love or of unhealthy self-denial? By bringing her and others forward hundreds of years, I was able to take a fresh look at their so-called virtues and vices in the light of contemporary thinking. Thus, their symbolic force is in motion, not static.

I: What reactions to your book have surprised you? What have you learned about it since you let it out into the world?

TD: I’ve been pleasantly surprised that each story has been named a “favourite” by at least one reader who has given me feedback and that readers get emotionally involved in the stories to the extent that they ask me how a character’s “fate” could be changed or what will happen to this character or that after the story is over.

I’ve been humbled by the realization that my book is but one of many thousands people can choose to read. And Victoria, where I live, supposedly has more writers per capita than any other Canadian city. I attended a literary event where someone said, “You can’t go outside without spitting on a writer.” Among the better known you could spit on: Bill Gaston, Patrick Lane, Susan Stenson, Lorna Crozier, Patricia Young, Lynne Van Luven, Linda Rogers, Susan Musgrave, Lorna Jackson, and John Gould. Local media and bookstores are not the least bit impressed by me.

I: You quit a corporate job to become a writer. You’ve noted that for two years you “turned out stuff that nobody wanted”– but what changed? And what did you learn during those two years?

TD: I got better! I took courses and workshops and joined Zoetrope.com, an online workshop sponsored by Francis Ford Coppola. I learned (and am still learning) much about the craft and received constructive criticism that I was able to translate into publishable work. I will forever be grateful to The New Quarterly for giving me my first acceptance and the confidence to keep writing and submitting.

I: What was your ultimate motivation to change your life and devote yourself to writing?

TD: Survival. As a senior executive, I became increasingly dispirited by the single-minded goal of delivering shareholder profit and the often soul destroying (for me) actions it required. Stress and long hours were making me unhealthy, as well. I began to think I wouldn’t live much longer and, with a sense of urgency, started writing my memoirs for my son and daughter. Before long, more of my heart was in that writing exercise than it was in business. The pull was too strong to ignore.

I: Who are the authors who have inspired you most as a writer? What writers excite you at the moment?

TD: Alice Munro is my hero for depth of characterization and her ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. Others who’ve inspired me for a variety of reasons are Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, Carol Windley,
Jane Smiley, Timothy Findley, and Michael Ondaatje. At the moment, I’m into Kathy Page whose 2004 GG-nominated Alphabet is brilliant. And, Cormac McCarthy, wow! I’m also into him.

I: What are you reading right now?

TD: I just finished Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, which did not live up to its hype for me. On my list to tackle next are: Mary Swan’s The Boys in the Trees, Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo and David Wroblewsky’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Reading more novels than short story collections is unusual for me, so I will no doubt go looking for Anthony De Sa’s Giller-nominated Barnacle Love.

Links:
Pickle Me This reviews Silent Girl
Tricia Dower’s website
Tricia Dower’s blog “Silent Girl Speaks”
Listen to Tricia reading
Inanna Publications

September 13, 2008

Author Interviews @ Pickle Me This: Rebecca Rosenblum

Rebecca Rosenblum and I first met in Goldberry Long‘s kitchen one sunny September afternoon in 2005. I remember being impressed by her outfit, and intrigued to learn she worked at Harlequin. For the next two years, we were both part of the Creative Writing Masters Program at the University of Toronto, reading each others’ stories as part of a great workshop group and taking the “Virginia Woolf: Essays and Short Fiction” and “Literature and the Environment” courses together. Rebecca’s graduate thesis has evolved into her short story collection Once. She is as talented a writer as she is a friend.

We had this conversation on Thursday the 11th of September at a Toronto coffee shop, and, as ever, I was impressed by her outfit.

I: What do you see as the links between the stories in Once? Tell us about your book.

RR: Some connections are obvious- characters reoccur, come into each others’ stories, and also some locations reoccur. A lot of people moving through the same neighbourhoods, and in my mind passing each other on the street, being in each others’ worlds, and I think those are connections that a reader doesn’t necessarily need to get. I feel the stories are united by that, and by characters being in the same sorts of worlds. Some are in Toronto, in Montreal, some are in a place that doesn’t really exist. But they’re also kind of in the same places emotionally. It’s a book about younger people and people who aren’t fitting quite as well– and it’s not clear if that’s “yet”, if they’re going to get it together. There are a lot of possibilities inherent.

I: Judging from these stories, what are your fixations as a writer?

RR: I’ve had some time to think about this and my first thing is people and that I’m a character-driven writer but more than that I’m interested in how people move into each other, pass each other. Incidental people who aren’t the great loves of your life, or you mother, daughter– [these people who] don’t have a fixed place but still matter. And because of that I’m interested in the places where we’re most open to [these connections]. I’m interested in writing stories in public places, like transit, which packs people in together. I’m interested in that.

I: What is it about transit?

RR: I love it so much. I’m from the country, as a kid I couldn’t go anywhere, was always failing my drivers test. If I got out on the lawn, there was only cornfields. So the freedom to go anywhere, to see strangers, which also doesn’t happen in the country. If there is a stranger, there is a reason for them to be there– they’re plumber, or the superintendent of the school. With transit there is a combination of freedom and the human aspect. And also the logic of necessity– I’m certainly not getting a car.

I: You write a lot about workplaces too. What about work do you find interesting?

RR: I’ve always found work a very challenging environment. As a teenager it was my first interaction with random people and it was really hard to have to do something you’re bad at, to have to do something you don’t like, and to have to turn off the rest of your life for eight hours. And I feel like that’s really often not acknowledged. A lot of novels take place between 6:30 and midnight, and it’s not really clear what goes on the rest of the day.

I: But then we want stories that are profound and wonderful, and the rest of the day can be so banal.

RR: Even if it is banal, it’s still creating a sense of self for the worker. “This is who I am” or, in reaction, “this is who I’m not”. Ideally, there are relationships- colleagues, competition, contact, you can’t escape that. I had a job once where I could and that was terrible. Doing freelance. Alone in my living room with no one to tell me what to do.

I: How do you see your title as relating to the whole collection?

RR: The title came about for a much earlier draft of the book, which was focused on the more magical stories. And I was trying to work against the idea of a fairy tale as being out of time and out of place and about people who aren’t really people but just archetypes. I wanted my more magical stories to be grounded in time, place, character. I wanted them to be about real people with extra stuff, like the ability to fly, but they weren’t lacking in character, history, or minimum wage jobs. “Once” was an answer to “Once Upon A Time”, putting time in a position that is specific and concrete.

I: I was also thinking “once” in terms of progress, transition. Once something happens, then something follows.

RR: I hope the characters are people in their lives, people moving, acting in their lives, and that something is going to come next. That they’re characters who’ve been somewhere before the first page of the story and they’re going somewhere after the last.

I: You once got annoyed by reading the following by Eudora Welty: “In a story you don’t go into character in order to develop him. He was born full grown, and he’s present there to perform his part in the story. He’s subservient to his function, and he doesn’t exist outside it.” Why do you disagree with this? But why do you think that Welty feels the way she does?

RR: I’m not that familiar with Eudora Welty, or her work. Of course there are writers who use story differently than I do, develop a theme, tight plot line– like Guy de Maupassant– not using fully developed characters, but a lot happens. These characters are a few strokes and you don’t need anything more to feel the poignancy of what happens. But I like stories where characters are more than the sum of their events. That’s the kind of story I want to read and the kind of story I want to write, and I guess it seemed like Welty thought that there was only one kind of story.

I: There are many overlaps between your stories– recurring characters and places. In your book you’ve created a miniature world with life going on, and I want to know, how does the imaginary world you’ve created differ from the actual one? What rules are different? What are the same?

RR: It’s really on a case-by-case basis. And the things that will work for one character won’t work for another.

I: Would Chilly Girl go to Pho-Mi 99?

RR: I wanted it to be clear that magic could exist in the world as we recognize it, but that it just might not have come up yet. So Chilly Girl’s condo party, and the view of the harbour- they’re all things that I’ve experienced. Or “Route 99” and “Linh Lai” and “Kids These Days” all overlap, “Route 99” and “Linh Lai” have incidents of magic but “Kids These Days” does not, and that’s the different way the lives of these characters are going.

I: But the end of “Kids These Days” was magical.

RR: That’s a story that went back and forth, and all over the place, and was terrible for a while. Some drafts had magic and some didn’t and those were the drafts that worked better.

I: Your work isn’t magical realism though. (Which I think is a funny term, because doesn’t all fiction require a suspension of disbelief?) Your stories have the effect of magic alongside realism. How does each inform the other?

RR: Yeah, with characters in any story, readers have to be able to believe in t
hem from scratch. We’ve never seen them, but we have to buy in to enjoy it, so to go one further and say they’ll do things we’ve never seen before– I don’t know if it’s so different.

I: But some readers have a problem with it. Personally I prefer your subtler magic, which sits alongside the realism.

RR: And I think that’s the way I’m growing up as a writer. I wrote this book over a long time and I had a lot of help and I think a lot of that learning was to reign the wilder points of fancy in and make them more meaningful.

I: I want to ask you about names– nicknames, unusual names. Names establish parametres in your stories. How do you name your characters? Do you ever change their names midway, and what effect does this have?

RR: I often will name the character the first thing that comes to me when think about them and assume this holds some organic truth. Often it doesn’t, but I feel really strongly about names, about my own name, and so it seems disrespectful towards characters to change theirs. Though sometimes it’s got to be done. It is great to be able to use all the names I want to use too– so many names it would be unfortunate to name your dog or your baby, but characters in a story are different.

I: What would you really like to say to the next person who asks when you’re going to try to write novels?

RR: I find it a very mean question– “when are you going to quit your job and do something else?” “When are you going to divorce that guy and marry something better?” When you’ve obviously made a choice or are in a position and you think its all right. It’s a very strange question to be asked. I think I would say, “That’s mean, leave it.” I think, “What’s wrong with what the stories, why do I have to do something else?” It’s not like I’d never like to write a novel, but it seems strange.

I: Amy King writes in her introduction to your work in the latest The New Quarterly that she was “astonished to learn that the life of the protagonist of [your story] “Fruit Factory” was perhaps not the life of Rebecca Rosenblum.” The story, she says, “is so evocative” that she feels “like she had snooped into [your diary].” Which made me feel better, that I’m not the only one. Because I usually know to observe (which might be to ignore?) the line between fact and fiction, but I remember sitting down with you a few years into our friendship, after thinking about this for about a year, and saying, “Listen, Rebecca. I don’t want to pry. Um, but did you lose somebody close to you?” And I was all set to hear about your tragedy. Because I’d read your epic-ish poem “Dead Boyfriend Disco” of course, and I was convinced that you’d been tap-dancing in your tub.

RR: That’s such high praise, what I aspire to. To make everything as real as real. So when you can convince somebody, that is a huge compliment. I try to be with the characters as much as possible, to be in their heads for weeks, months, years. To think out how their lives work. I don’t usually do research beyond thinking (which is easy to do on the bus) but sometimes I will try to track down things I’m not sure of. And I do use clothes, sandwiches and stray lines from my own life, if I’ve feel that connection. I don’t mean to say that I never write autobiographically, but I don’t like to .

I: But you do get asked about the role autobiography plays in your fiction. What do you think of these questions?

RR: I don’t think it’s helpful, or relevant, and yet when I read a book, I want to know too. When I read something and author bio is close to that, I want to know more about the connection. I don’t know why I want to know, but ideally I would like to think it’s because we care about the characters, about the stories, and we hope for more story. If it’s real, the story will keep going. That is the most positive spin I can put on it.

I: In your own life, what circumstances entirely unrelated to writing have made you a better writer?

RR: I think having a job helps so much. Just to be in the world for me is really important, which is what I didn’t like about freelancing.

I: I usually ask about influences in a general sense, but I’ve got a general sense of yours already. So I want to know more about what you learned about literature from Francesca Lia Block.

RR: Abundance, I think. And joy in words and the abundance of words. Just keep going, keep describing and if one adjective is okay, then maybe four would be amazing. And don’t just say they had dinner, but describe every condiment, and what they felt, and how it tasted as they kissed after. Certainly she’s not anyone people are talking about as a serious writer, but she has the energy that you don’t see very often, and maybe a kind of freedom to do whatever she wants because people are just going say “Oh she’s YA” and keep walking.

I: What are you reading right now? What’s up next?`

I: I love that book!

RR: You’re the reason I bought it. It’s validation for what I’m doing,–the doubts, that Annie Dillard has felt it too.

I: What upcoming book in your own reading stack are you looking forward to?

RR: Claudia’s Dey’s Stunt, which I know is amazing because I’ve heard her read from it twice, and I want to read the whole of it.

(Once is out September 15th.)