EVADNE MACEDO ON WRITING

FICTION – FOR A CHANGE

Exclusive interview: Sarah Sheard on Writing (April 14, 2010)

April14

In this exclusive interview with Evadne Macedo, author of The 29th Day, Sarah Sheard shares her thoughts on writing. Sarah Sheard is a professional psychotherapist and has written three novels (Almost Japanese, The Swing Era: a Novel, The Hypnotist: a Novel).

Sarah Sheard on Writing:

1.  I first met you at a “Night with an Author” organized by Pradeep Solanki on February 23, 2010. We really appreciated a chance to speak with you about the challenges we face as writers and hear your advice. You seemed to enjoy mentoring writers. Personally, I am grateful for the active mentorship of Terry Fallis, award-winning author of The Best Laid Plans and The High Road (coming out in September 2010). I wonder if anyone has supported you in your writing. If so, how has that support helped you grow as a writer?

Many people have been supportive. Fellow writers have shared their collegial warmth through things like readings, The Writers’ Union events, and so on. Several personal friends (also writers) have been particularly cheering when I’ve wondered about the merits of this enterprise and my role in it. In my early writing career, several established writers were particularly helpful in offering constructive suggestions and feedback. I’ve also been cheered forward by a couple of independent booksellers. And of course, readers have been astonishingly generous.

Essentially, I have learned where to find most of my own sources of self-renewal and watch for how other writers reach out for theirs. In the earlier years of writing, I did a lot of listening to senior writers. They gave me a sense of how a professional writer gets on with things. Shop talk hasn’t changed a great deal over the last 30 years — which I do find somewhat odd. The names of the players in publishing houses have changed, of course. The big transition rolling into place now is the conversion to electronic publishing. In fighting for a fair deal, I feel we Canadian writers are being left very much on our own.

2a. One of the topics on the March 11, 2010 episode of Writers’ Confessions (a television series about writers and how they write) was on writing as therapy, whether for the reader or writer. Writers such as Valerie Martin and Charlotte Gill spoke about the extent to which writing helps them understand challenging situations in their lives. Writing an early draft of a scene or a raw journal entry might be therapeutic but it seems to me — having just completed a nine months of polishing my first novel, The 29th Day — that the painful final stages of revisions wipe out any putative therapeutic benefit gained by the writer in the early phases. Do you find writing therapeutic? Does your professional training as psychotherapist help you prevent or quickly resolve the typical psychological issues — insecurity, writers’ block etc. — writers face? What tips do you have for writers who struggle with these issues?

This is a three-part question.

(a) Do I find writing therapeutic?

Hmmm, not directly. But I do know that if I have not been sitting down at my work for a few days, I notice a slight irritation inside myself, a bit of ADD and a vague sort of discomfort. When I do sit down and do a few good hours of work, I feel restored and content, happy after that to do housework, gardening, whatever. I can’t let writing go for very many days before this other feeling begins to creep back in again.

(b) Does my psychotherapy training help me resolve writerly issues within myself?

Again, not directly, I don’t think. I can’t really “shrink” myself but I do have pretty decent tools for detecting whatever’s going on inside me by this point. I can identify my state of mind and then move on with less ’stickiness’ than in my earlier years, for sure. I have also used some of the lovely Gestalt ways to get inside my characters — dialoguing with them, interrogating them if need be, sitting inside their psyches in order to gain insight. I’ve found this to be a fruitful way of illuminating the next bend in the story’s trail.

(c) Do you have any tips for writers struggling with issues of writer’s block, insecurity etc.

Don’t wait too long to address these issues effectively. Get some help sooner rather than later. The longer a writer doesn’t write, the harder it is to get back into writing. Days can turn into years. Writing’s a discipline and there is no shortage of helpful texts on how to push past these utterly normal resistances. It’s normal for a writer to analyse, analyse, their difficulty and this often yields no useful insights. The key is to work anyway, no matter what, and to set an achievable daily writing goal and stick to it, no matter what. Resistance will be dissolved by the writer’s persistence in writing, not by analysing the resistance.

3a. Fiction may be a means of building empathy or understanding. Deborah Willis spoke about this in her interview with me, Alissa York described this on the March 11, 2010 episode of Writers’ Confessions and Nancy Lamb covered this in The Art and Craft of Storytelling. When I read a story written in first person present, I really find my mind stretches to accept another person’s reality in a more visceral way than would otherwise be possible (for example, hearing a person tell a story, watching a movie, or reading a non-fction account of the same circumstances). In his interview with me, Thomas Trofimuk spoke of his goal of writing a great story that shines a light on the human condition. Do you find your knowledge of human behaviour helpful in telling compelling stories?

It’s essentially what I’m about as a writer. I suspect it’s what all writers are about if they’re writing insightful fiction of any depth.

3b. As a psychotherapist and novelist, what links do you see between storytelling and personal understanding?

People are very much about their stories and how they see themselves inside that story. They can also get stuck inside terribly sad, unhelpful stories about who they are and why. Much of my work as therapist is about unearthing the roots to those stories and checking out whether the client is  ready and willing to cut those roots and re-author a new story for themselves. We reinforce our old narratives, particularly in times of difficulty, and in relationship to others. We gradually come to believe in the story’s fixed authority. Not so. It’s exciting work to help a client unearth the out-of-awareness elements of their narrative and to encourage them to start a new one in the present.

3c. Are there any established uses of fiction in therapy?

There is a form of therapy called Narrative Therapy. I don’t formally adhere to it in my own work with clients. I do a hybrid, something a little more informal, perhaps.

4. It seems quite common that writers start with short stories and transition to novels. For example, Pasha Malla who I interviewed on February 17, 2010, is working on his first novel after his critically-acclaimed collection of short stories, The Withdrawal Method. In my March 31, 2010 interview with Kristen den Hartog, she described how she made the transition from short stories to novels. Did you start with short stories, or had you always intended to write novels? If you did start with short pieces, how did you make the jump to novels?

I did start with things I called short fictions. I simply had no other way to describe them. I never really thought in terms of structured short stories but more, fragments, moments in the experiences, perceptions, of a character. And of course, was finding my own ways of describing that in words. Looking back, I suspect I’d now see these as fragments from a novelistic head. Bits that would ultimately be best located inside a longer narrative, experienced within a character. I still tend to see longer narratives (novels) as chains of short snapshots of experience by characters. It’s an effort for me to write connector-bits in between. I imagine it’s the way I also experience reality, in sort of snaps of light & perception followed by blackout and then another snap! and so on. Clusters of these.

5a. When I write, I start with an idea and I develop my characters and plots by thinking of specific actions or events and how the character(s) might respond to those circumstances. Towards the end of the novel, I start to list chapter contents as this helps me determine the final structure of the work, but this sort of outline tracks what I have written rather than dictates what I will write. Whether I am writing or reading, I am motivated by the promise of building suspense — I want to know, “What happens next?” Writers such as Miriam Toews, Pasha Malla and Emily Schultz seem to also rely on similar intuitive approaches. Other writers like to map out a novel from start to finish before they write. This seems to be a very efficient and successful way of writing — for example, best-selling (and prolific) author Joy Fielding uses and recommends outlines as part of her advice to developing writers. Award-winning writer Terry Fallis wrote a detailed outlines for both his novels, The Best Laid Plans and The High Road. What is your approach to writing novels?

It might start with a feeling of intensity inside an imagined character. This intensity might be vague and not yet directed towards any specific goal. Then it starts to clarify a bit until I can feel it as something obsessive. My character is uncomfortable, yearning, hungry, craving, unbalanced, seeking. I work organically from there. I look for obstacles and companions for my central character. Things for my central character to bounce off and land on. I used to write about intense, thwarted love affairs between characters. I am no longer interested in these. I am more interested in obsessive pursuits of experiences and objectives other than love.

5b. Has your approach evolved over time?

I’ve figured out a few simple mechanical organisational tricks for myself. Other than that, I suspect my approach has evolved very little. I do very little longhand writing. That’s a change. It’s direct-to-keyboard now, from little notebooks. I also notice that I rarely keep a journal although for years and years I had one on the go. I take a journal  with me always when travelling  —which I do only rarely, since I’ve come to dislike travelling, post 9/11.

5c. How do you know when your manuscript is done?

It’s done when I feel I’ve squashed out all the air between the bits I’ve written and everything is in as tight a formation as I can figure. I have also run a polishing cloth over every sentence. Then I began the gruesome task of sending the MS out to publishers.

5d. Are there any non-fiction guides or great works of literature that you have found helpful in improving your writing?

I’m endlessly turned on and redirected by terrific new writing, fiction or nonfiction, whenever I encounter it. I don’t encounter it as often any more and this may be a function of having read a swimming pool full of novels by now. I’ve grown pretty selective. I have embraced the work of motivational folks like Og Mandino and Napoleon Hill and an equitation coach, Jane Savoie, in order to push myself past bouts of tentativeness or uncertainty. I’m also very supported by meditation and I read something by a Buddhist teacher daily.

6a. Do you see any similarities between Almost Japanese, The Hypnotist and the Swing Era?

I don’t really have much of a view on this. I resist analysing my own writing. I’m actually not that interested in writing that I’ve already finished. They’re fossils of life that once inched across the ocean floors of my mind. Long dead.

6b. Are you continuing with these themes or approaches in your fourth novel, or can we anticipate a new direction in your writing?

I don’t consciously think about themes. I think about characters. I think the two central characters in Krank are a huge departure but readers may laugh when I say this and insist they’re not. Who knows?

6c. You mentioned a new book, can you say what it will be about?

My new book, Krank, follows a friendship struck up between two eccentric solitaries: Bertolt Brecht, who finds himself reincarnated, in the present, on Ward’s Island, waiting for the ferryboat. He encounters Ainsley, a middle-aged therapist (!) subletting a cottage on the island. The two of them cobble together an odd friendship, dealing with contemporary island politics around the airport and the proposed bridge. Eventually the two of them go to Berlin where time twists once again and politics from the past reappear in the present.

7a. In reading your bestselling book, The Hypnotist, I was very interested to see how you created a believable (but rather creepy) tension between the villain, a hypnotist, and the female protagonist, a strong woman who gradually falls under his “control.” Throughout the book I was curious about the psychology behind the relationship between Signe and William and how this relationship would play out – this was a book I found difficult to put down once I had started it. Yet, the story ended leaving the reader wanting to know more about what was going on between Signe and William (how exactly did he exert that influence over her?). How did you know what balance to strike within your characters and within your narrative as a whole?

I can’t articulate how I knew that. It’s about not telling too much, showing as much as possible. I’m not sure of your question.

7b. Were you wary about putting too much psychology into the book?

Not wary. I put in whatever I knew, which was rather little at that time. I had not yet launched into formal training as a psychotherapist. I imagine what readers were drawn to was the dilemma between those two people and it was one with which many readers identified. I tried to make the psychological parts as accurate and as deep a depiction as I was capable of, myself. I imagine this was what readers liked. I imagine too that they liked my way with words.

7c. What do you think are the qualities that made The Hypnotist a bestseller? More generally, what makes a book a best seller (both in Canada and elsewhere?)

I don’t know what makes for a bestseller. If I did know or could predict that, I’d be a massive publishing success. Instead, I write only what interests me and won’t leave me alone.

8. Could you please comment on the practicalities behind your writing. For example, do you keep notes in a notebook? If so, at what point to you transfer them to a computer? Do you write on a laptop or a desktop? Do you hide yourself away in a quiet room or write at cafés? And the biggest question of all: Do you use a Mac or a PC?

As I mentioned above, I carry a small pocket notebook everywhere. I write short notes only. I then sit at a laptop that’s not connected to the internet and unpack the notes into text. I have a USB keychain thingy that I then carry up to the 3rd floor where my office is and print out daily pages. I have always and only used a Mac.

I can sometimes write in an anonymous space like a cafe, restaurant, or library. Piped-in music is an almost insurmountable distraction to me though. I’ve tried writing on trains and planes but I dislike the jiggling which makes my handwriting look drunken, and the proximity to the next person. I get distracted wondering if they’re stealing glances. Occasionally, they are, if it’s a laptop I’m using.

9. When we met on February 23, 2010, you spoke at length about your experiences starting out as a writer and editor for Coach House, a literary press created to publish the works of its founding members, and your more recent thoughts about how a collective of writers might be able to follow a similar model using the range of publishing options that are now available. In December 2009, I asked Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk for their thoughts on the viability of collaborative writing/publishing on a larger scale and I think some of my blog readers would be quite interested in hearing your experiences and advice on this topic. How might some enterprising writers take advantage of the gaps in the publishing market and new online tools?

I go into this at the end. (There is more detail on this on my blog. It’s a big topic.)

10. Do you have any messages or social goals that you try to bring out in your writing? Do you use your “celebrity” from fiction writing to support any social causes or charities?

Do I have celebrity? I don’t think so.  It’s certainly not palpable to me as a tool for social change. Would be nice. If it were so, I would support urban micro-farming and the pooling of common space for recreation and market gardens — like the English use of a Commons. I’d love to see the return of a horse-powered agrarian culture within an urban setting. If Black Creek Pioneer Village could be moved downtown, I’d be there in a flash. How’s that for a fantasy.

11. Do you have any final words of advice or encouragement for aspiring writers?

Seize the means of production for yourselves. Don’t be as dependent as my generation has been on Big Daddy Publisher and Big Mummy Agent and Big Sister Bookstore Chain. Strike up your own system of filtering out writing-dreck, promote strong writing only, put it up on a writer-driven, writer-identified website, install the architecture you need for turnstiling downloaded files through a secure paying system like Paypal and fight for proper payment for the Creator, not the Middlemen.

The technology is already here. Print on Demand book-making machines are already in existence. Find someone to invest in a “bookstore” and make that part of the service. A coffee shop could also be a bookmaking kiosk, hangout for writers and readers with a computer there for displaying the online catalogue and facilitating downloads.

Remove the middlepeople. They are fast becoming irrelevant and they know it. They are panicking and will not be helpful in this transition.
There are kindred spirits out there. Jason Epstein. The National Writers’ Union in the US. Jaron Lanier (author of You are not a Gadget). Find those empowering kindred spirits and form alliances with them that will put writers’ interests first. That is how you will keep the culture and its artists alive.

Don’t let anyone sell you on the notion that “information wants to be free.” Information is information. It has no wants. Creators must be paid for their efforts. Full Stop.

For more information about Sarah Sheard, please visit her blog at http://www.sarahsheard.com. She has written some articles that would be particularly interesting for other writers on rejection, writing at home, and authentic expression of feeling. Sarah Sheard also offers services to writers such as coaching and therapy, mentorship and workshops.

This interview was originally posted on April 14, 2010 at http://books.macedo.ca

When you visit http://books.macedo.ca, see also Evadne Macedo’s previous interviews and profiles:

After Evadne Macedo’s interview with Sarah Sheard, visit http://books.macedo.ca for the last two interviews in Evadne’s fall 2009/winter 2010 author interview series:

  • Emily Schultz: Black Coffee Night, Joyland, Heaven is Small, and Songs for the Dancing Chicken
  • Karen Connelly: Burmese Lessons, The Lizard Cage, Grace and Poison, The Border Surrounds Us, The Disorder of Love, One Room in a Castle, The Brighter Prison, The Small Words in My Body, and Dream of a Thousand Lives.

The interviews will resume in fall 2010/winter 2011 with:

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