Andrea MacPherson

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been called a melancholy writer, which, for the most part, I can’t argue with. I don’t tend to write sprawling, hilarious, tongue-in-cheek sagas including a quirky narrator’s voice and unlikely scenarios. And here is the rub, though, with being an author — people assume that your work informs them about you. You as a person. You as a private citizen. Somehow, the distinction between an author’s work and an author’s life gets muddy. Yes, they tend to overlap — we thieve, we thieve, and so we sometimes thieve from ourselves — but they are not an exact replica of one another.

This got me thinking. I like to laugh. I really do. But I tend to reside in the shelters of irony and sarcasm; I’m never going to be the one doing a crazy costumed dance for your viewing pleasure. So why do these elements not translate to my writing? I appreciate and enjoy novels that combine the tragic and the comedic — I just finished Lesley Kagen’s Whistling in the Dark, a very humorous story about a hospitalized mother, a rampant pedophile and a dead father: I know, sounds hilarious, right? But it is — but these are not stories that I write. My characters don’t roll on the floor laughing, they don’t dance in their skivvies until they are breathless, they don’t point out the ironic in life. Is it perspective? Voice? I think sustaining a story involving humour in such a natural and integral way might tire me out. It’s tricky, that fine line, the need to balance the tragi-comic.

So, I’ll just say I am not endlessly surrounded by suicides, doomed love affairs, depressed and lovely women, horrible and handsome men, tragic deaths, fires and missing children. Maybe that’s why my characters are.

This has been an interesting few weeks for me: first, the inevitable shock and awe at my computer crashing, and facing the possibility of books and collections lost; then, the joy of saving the work, and getting a new computer [MacBook Pro - still adjusting]; then a weekend at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference and the Vancouver International Writers’ Fest, where I was forced to consider and articulate my own work; and the publication of my first piece of non-fiction with Prism International. It’s had me thinking about words, and strangely being unable to actually work with those words.

It’s been a slow couple months for me, in terms of my own writing. I assumed this was because of my heavy teaching load this term, and because – of course! – I could scribble in long-hand [as I always do] but not transfer onto computer. This should not have presented a problem, but it did. It was, I now see, a convenient reason not to write. But the better question was: why did I need an excuse at all?

I’m in the throes of trying to finish a draft of a novel, and at the same time am falling slowly in love with the idea for a new novel. I’m in limbo. And, as anyone will tell you, that is not a good place to be. Do I need to commit to one, finish it through? Or can I give myself permission – and the gift – of allowing myself to write what is inspiring me at the moment? To write in hot, fervent flashes of prose that might be good. Or might be complete rubbish.

I heard myself tell 30-ish other writers this weekend that the important thing was to write the story you are passionate about. I heard the words, and then I wondered, why I am not taking my own advice? Perhaps because writing is a craft, it’s work – I know no one wants to hear this – and if I never made myself finish one project before starting the next, I would never complete a chapter, nevermind a whole novel. Passion is wonderful – essential, grand, breathlessly wonderful. But hard work and perseverance, however dull they may sound, really are the thing.

So, a friend of mine informed me that there was another cover using my book image – imagine the shock and horror! I understand the need – it is a beautiful, if melancholy, cover – but it shocked me that they would want to use it. And, to be honest, it’s the second time there has been another book using the image I had agreed to….

I’m told by a certain computer guru friend that he has been able to save the work from my hard drive as well as all the photos archived there. A huge sigh of relief by me. And from others, Why don’t you back up? It’s a question that continues to baffle me – why don’t I?

This weekend means laptop shopping for me – because, while he was able to save my work, he could not save the laptop – and the purchase of something on which to back up. I promise.

My laptop has frozen – completely. Words are trapped in some limbo, grey and sluggish and waiting to be rescued. Say your prayers for me.

We took a trip to Ka’anapali this summer, and when I returned a friend said to me, ‘Well, it must have been relaxing – you wouldn’t have to see any “sites” there’. The assumption, I suppose, being that because it was Hawaii, because it involved a beach and sea and sunshine, and perhaps because it was the States, there was no culture or history there. This surprised me, and got me thinking.

I find travel to be a boundless source of inspiration. I’ve published a collection of travel poems, and most of my fiction owes, in some part, its inspiration to travel. I’m not entirely sure why this is, why I am more comfortable writing about the view down a dormant volcano than the view from my kitchen window [where, sadly, the geraniums are coming to an end]. Perhaps it’s the surprise of a new place, a new culture, being bumped up against something surprising. Each place I visit leaves some sort of fingerprint on me, smudged and sticky, regardless of its locale. Tropical, dusty, rainy – it makes no difference to me.

When we were in Nuevo Vallarta last year, I didn’t write about the sea, or about the way the palms lined the walk, but about the Feast of Guadalupe, and the way the streets bulged with white. And this time, coming home from Maui, I had a poem about a missionary’s wife and the gift of a commode tucked in my pocket.

Natural Disasters was longlisted for the ReLit Awards, ‘the  country’s pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses’ [The Globe & Mail].

I will admit, straightaway, that I am a sunshine person, someone who loves all things to do with summer – dresses, sandals, flowers that keep blooming, bbqs, sitting out all night long, pitchers of sangria.  And, so, it might make sense that I have been over-occupied with all things to do with the garden.  Might.  Might, if I wasn’t also trying to start a new novel, to have a coherent thought, to think of anything beyond the way my regal geraniums droop and how my hibiscus keeps blooming beyond reason.

 I wonder if maybe, just maybe, because of my home on the west coast of BC, of seeing so many months of grey and being comforted by it, I’m unable to write when it’s sunny out.  Once, a reviewer insinuated I was melancholy.  I balked.  And then I thought, but yes.  I suppose I am.  It’s the tragedy that interests me, the parts of ourselves we’re not keen to admit.  So perhaps I am a rainy, cool, all water-coloured [like my mother's paintings] writer.  Expect nothing from me during the months I might tan.

I’ve been away on a book tour for my new collection, Away, for just over a week.  Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal.  Living in hotels and out of suitcases.  Writing on planes, trains and small round tables overlooking busy streets or parking lots.  And this got me thinking about the places we write, how they inform us as artists, how they might inspire or challenge us.  At home, I have a large, glass-topped desk in a room with large windows, but now – here, in Toronto – I’m making due with a ‘desk’ that also houses a coffee maker, bottles of water and a half a lemon.  Writers are chameleons of sorts; if the mood strikes, if the muse appears and demands to be heard, we can write anywhere.  Desk.  Lap.  Park bench.  Sometimes, even, on the back of a napkin or hand.

The Guardian runs a series on writers’ spaces, and the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival has started something similar as well.  When I looked through these, it became apparent that where a writer chooses to write can be illuminating about who they are as a writer.  What does my white desk and collection of old photos say?  Old soul?  Consistently preoccupied with the past?  Or perhaps that I find it hard to let things go – the past, the photos, all the stories that come with them.

I got some early copies of Away last week, so that I might have some with me for a reading at the Pacific Festival of the Book in Victoria.  It arrived in a non-descript cardboard box, a little dented and very well taped.  It sat on the kitchen counter, looking at me.  Away is my fourth book, and I keep waiting for the whole process to become blase – seeing the book for the first time, holding it in your hand, seeing it in a bookstore.  All that.  I’m still waiting.

It was all excitement and rosy cheeks.  I held the first copies in my hands after only slightly struggling with tape and scissors, bordering on giddy.  It’s always something to see a new book.  The concept of the abstract to the tangible applies here: they were just words in my notebook, on my laptop, in my head, and now they are made concrete.  I flipped through the collection, sometimes surprised by the words.  Publishing is a long process; I had forgotten some of the lines, some of the images, and at times was actually surprised by what I read.  The author and audience meet.

Away has turned out beautifully.  I couldn’t be happier with the final product, with my publisher, or with the excitement that still comes in a tattered old box.