Do you allow anyone to read your books before being published other than the publisher and is there a reason behind that?
Three wise women read early editions: my wife, a very close friend, and my agent. I like to let my wife read "nearly-ready" drafts because she's an eclectic reader, and she's not been through university. She's not ruined by what she's "supposed" to think is good, or bad, writing. She loves good stories. If the story works for her, I feel confident the book's in good shape. As much as I really work on the layered nuances of the language and the "beat" of the narrative - and I will sharpen, refine and polish - if the story doesn't work, I've failed. The story has to work above all else. Of course, I want my novel to be much more than "story" but that story tension has to be there first. My wife is my "every-woman" reader. I trust her instincts.
My very close friend is a professor and a refined reader. She reads - lovingly - for the layers, the big picture. She's brilliant at finding unwanted repetitions. She also reminds me of where the book sits in the world. She has that ability to see the connection points. She makes gentle suggestions, nudges really, and her suggestions will change the colour of the novel. The tone of the book will shift ever so slightly and it will be better.
My agent sees the draft before the book goes to the publishers. She will make suggestions too. And I listen to her. She knows the editors to whom she's sending the manuscript and so her suggestions are focused on that small group of important readers.
I know. My first readers are all women. I don't know what that says about me.
What literary inspirations do you draw from?
Ernest Hemingway. Kurt Vonnegut. Michael Ondaatje. Wallace Stegner. Carol Shields. Alice Munro. Al Purdy. Mordecai Richler. John Irving. Rumi. Mavis Gallant. Tobias Wolff. Lawrence Durrell. Trevanian. Paul Bowles. Mark Twain. Tom Stoppard. Italo Calvino. Billy Collins. Paul Bowles.
All these writers have fine, strong voices that are distinct, and they are incredible story tellers - masters of story and dialogue and playfulness. You'll notice a few poets on my list; also good story tellers. It took me a good long time to extricate myself from Hemingway. I read him and find myself - unconsciously - trying to write like him. And, of course, nobody writes like Hemingway.
What is the best book you have ever read and how did you come to that conclusion?
This is an impossible question for a book lover, and I am a book lover. Right now, at this age, the best book I've ever read is The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Next year, the best book I've ever read might be Angle of Repose, or Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. Last year, it was Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. When I was 30 years old, it was Setting Free the Bears by John Irving. When I was 35, it was In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje. There. Proof positive of impossibility of this question.
If you could work with any author who would it be?
I think the very best writers are probably really bad teachers, or at least, they struggle with teaching. I know some fine writers who are also great teachers, but perhaps these are exceptional anomalies.
Could I work with an artist instead of a writer? Could I study with Pablo Picasso? Walk the streets of Cannes and on the beaches, and he would give me lessons on seeing the world. We would meet in the morning, the same time every day, and each day we would start by looking at one particular thing - the waves, the rocks at the edge of the ocean, the clouds, stray dogs. We would study women for an entire month, and then at the end of that month, Picasso will be sitting at a café table, quite blasted on the white wine, flirting with the waitress, and "I think this demands more study," he will say. And that will be it. I won't see him again for three months. He will come back and have produced fifty drawings, and a dozen paintings. The waitress will be gone - used up and thrown away. And then, Picasso will sit down with a grunt, order a bottle of wine, and we will begin again.
If I have to stick with writers, then I would love to sit down with Michael Ondaatje and Tobias Wolff for a couple glasses of wine some afternoon.
How do you manage to get inside the heads of all your different characters in order to portray them truthfully?
This is a brilliant and difficult question. Part of the answer is "I don't know" because there are points in the writing process when my characters will stand up and say: "I'm sorry. I'm not doing that!" They will demand a different course and we will argue. The thing in me that knows what is true for a particular character always wins. They become real.
I start to learn them by taking them shopping. I land on a name and then let that name settle for a while. They don't come fully formed. Then, I literally take my characters shopping. Literally. I will walk up and down the aisle with my characters and a shopping cart and look at everything on the shelf and figure out what they eat. And then I will take them clothes shopping and figure out what they would wear - ("I'm shopping for my wife, honest," I'll say. "Really.") - marching through women's clothing shops trying to decide the physical appearance of a particular character. This gives me a really firm idea of who they are. But then they surprise me. They develop, and then they shock me.
Often, the physical traits and vocal tics, their preferences in music, wine, Scotch, clothes, food and sex will be entry points into the psychic make-up of a character. And I am drawn to the beautifully damaged characters, so sometimes their damage is ultimately defining. Once developed, I deny my conscious self influence on my own characters. It's an exercise in mostly controlled insanity.
Who is your favourite character from any book and why?
Nicolai Hel, the ultimate anti-hero of a book titled Shibumi, by Trevanian, is my favourite. This is a book about finding a graceful peace in an imperfect and violent world. Shibumi follows the story of a retired assassin who is quite literally a man without a country as he is drawn back into the game. Something about Nicolai Hel got in me and stuck. While this is not a deep book, the idea of "shibumi," an understated perfection, and the novel's wonderful backbone of the game of Go, still fascinate me.
How do you decide on the names of your characters?
The name has to match the character. I need to know what a name means, where it came from and any present-day allusions. Sometimes I will ignore all of this if I like the sound of a name. Case in point, I really like the names Moira, Driffa and Mehmet. I'm less concerned with the meanings of these names just because I like the way they roll in the mouth. But I will still know what they mean. I have naming dictionaries. I like several "meaning of the name" websites. Newspapers, telephone books and graveyards are also great sources of names, and name combinations. In the end, the name has to match the character. My characters, once they are established and begin to breathe, will often insist on changing their names.
Do you have any little quirks or funny habits when you are writing?
You mean other than locking myself, naked except for socks, in a room that is empty except for a small desk and a computer and a red book called The Synonym Finder? I don't like on-line dictionaries or thesauruses. It's because of the inadvertent words that I stumble upon while looking up a particular desired word. You know? The word above, or below, or three down, or the one of the opposite page that screams: I'm a great word! Use me! Use me! You don't get this experience on-line. I'm kidding about the naked in a locked room bit. Though it often feels like that when I'm writing.
I will often pour a small portion of pretty good single malt whisky. Ninety per cent of the time, I don't actually drink it. I just like having it there. And I like to play music that matches the mood of the scene I'm writing. I love movie soundtracks (The Moderns, Cinema Paradiso, Russia House), or string quartets, or any one of the dozen or so versions of the Bach cello suites I've collected. Neither of these traits are funny, nor are they quirky.
How long did the book take you to write?
Waiting for Columbus took a long time to be fully born. Columbus, the delusional, wine-loving patient, first knocked on my door about 15 years ago. I was looking for a fictional way to explore the idea of obsession - a story hook. I opened the door of my apartment and there he was - dishevelled, lost, desperate, and most importantly, obsessed. So I let him in. I started to write about this fictitious Columbus. I mean he had to be obsessed, right? All the best minds of his day said it was too far to sail west to Japan and India but he was determined to go anyway. All the experts said he'd die out there. But I want to see what's out there, he replied. His venture was a long shot. If he hadn't accidentally run into the West Indies, we wouldn't know about Columbus - he'd just be a blip on the historical radar. He'd be a guy who got some boats, sailed west, and died somewhere between Spain and Japan. I wound up writing about 30,000 words. I would read the history books on Columbus at night, and then write in the mornings. I began to understand just how many books there were out in the world on Christopher Columbus, and also how many of them disagreed. The scholars can't even agree on where he came from. Was it Italy, Spain, Portugal? To have this sort of myth and mystery around this historical figure is the perfect scenario for a fiction writer - there's a freedom and latitude. And I wanted to make it clear that my Columbus, and what would become the novel Waiting for Columbus, were works of fiction - not history, and not historical fiction. That's why inside the story Columbus tells to Consuela, the twenty-first-century (at the time, twentieth-century) artefacts started showing up in the fifteenth century. Hairdryers, cell phones, cars, handguns all got dropped into the fifteenth century because the history was only the vehicle for the story, a way to unravel the obsession, a love story, and as it turns out, a narrative with a tragedy at its heart. Just past the 30,000-word mark, I hit the wall. I really liked what I'd written but I had no idea what to do with it. There was no narrative arc to it. Not yet. So I created a new folder on my computer, saved the Columbus file, and moved on. About three years ago, I woke up with the story - I knew how to show the Columbus story. Everything was just sitting there ready to be written, and here we are.
What writing plans do you have for next year?
I am writing two novels, simultaneously. Some, including me, would say this is pure stupidity, but it seems to be working - I'll work in one book for a few days and then switch to the other narrative. Back and forth, back and forth . . . They are very different in tone, structure and setting. Working titles: The Healing Waters of Rònaigh and The World is Three Days. Rònaigh is set on a mostly fictitious island off the coast of Scotland and in a bed, in a bedroom, somewhere in the world. Three Days is set in Mexico and Canada.