Steven Heighton's novels, short fiction, poetry and essays have garnered international attention as well as many accolades at home, including numerous National Magazine Awards and nominations for both the Trillium Book Award and the Governor General's Literary Award. His newest project is Workbook: Memos & Dispatches On Writing (ECW Press).
Steven Heighton talks with Open Book about critics, mentors and the literary benefits of canine companionship.
Open Book:
Tell us about your book, Workbook.
Steven Heighton:
I’ve been describing it as a small collection of memos and fragmentary essays. In fact, there are only two essays; most of the book consists of memos, notes, irreverent definitions, epigrams, brief rants and provocations, etc.
OB:
Workbook addresses the mentor/protégé relationship. What do you view as some of the risks and rewards of young writers having mentors they admire greatly?
SH:
I think the rewards (expert editing, encouragement) speak for themselves. So do the risks (expert editing, encouragement). I’m not trying to be flippant. Too much encouragement, when a young writer is actually writing badly, can be harmful; likewise too much expert editing, too early in a career. In fact, such editing can be akin to over-helping your teenage kids when they reach algebra in math class and throw up their hands … If an editor is constantly cleaning up your mistakes before you fully understand what those mistakes are, how are you going to improve? You’ll become as dependent on your editor as some people are on their therapists.
I was lucky as a novice writer: mostly I struggled on my own, made my own mistakes, suffered necessary humiliations. By the time literary mentors did take me on, I’d developed my own distinctive, if problematic, style, through lots of reading, solitary writing and rewriting. But the style was problematic and that’s where the mentors came in. Realizing I was smitten with language, John Metcalf worked to curb a lover’s natural excess. Al Purdy recognized the same problem and, through the frequent and advisedly tactless application of the word “bullshit,” helped me to pare down. But neither tried to change my basic, maximalist sensibility — nor could they have, because by then I’d developed my own voice and temperament.
OB:
You also tackle the waning culture of professional literary criticism and the rising trend of writers reviewing one another in Workbook. Do you think it is possible for writers to review one another in an unbiased manner?
SH:
Yes, so long as the writers in question aren’t friends or antagonists. If they are, an unbiased review is pretty much out of the question. That’s just human nature.
Of course, all reviews are biased on some level, but your question seems to be referring to personal, collegial, competitive biases, which are different from, say, intellectual or ideological ones.
OB:
Workbook is refreshing in its focus on the writing process, rather than career-centric advice. How do you avoid getting too wrapped up in the business side of things?
SH:
I’m not above that stuff, it’s just that the business side of things dismays me, so avoiding it is a breeze, like avoiding creamed corn, Coors Lite or reality TV shows. As for dispensing “career-centric” advice on the use of social networking to promote one’s work, avoiding that, too, comes easily, since my knowledge of the subject is nil: I don’t use Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. In fact, they all sound really useful, but — as I argue in "Given to Inspiration,” one of the essays in Workbook — a writer needs to be cautious about overextending his or her already stretched attention span and “expending [more time] as a compliant, efficient functionary — earnest secretary to [one’s] own little career.”
OB:
How different would Workbook have been if you wrote it ten years ago? Has your view on any of these subjects changed over the years?
SH:
I doubt it would have been very different if I’d written it ten years ago. But fifteen or twenty? Here are a few lines (from “Memos to a Younger Self”) that would not have been in that earlier version — and their conjectural absence will give you an idea of the kind of material an earlier Workbook might have contained: “Squash the temptation to accentuate, poeticize, or wallow in the difficulties of the writing life, which are probably not much worse than the particular difficulties of other professions and trades. Take a tradesman’s practical approach to your development: quietly apprentice yourself to language and the craft, then start filling up your toolbox, item by item, year by year.”
OB:
You are one of the true multi-genre writers working consistently in short and long fiction, non-fiction and poetry. How do you know to which form an idea is best suited?
SH:
Sometimes it’s obvious — some impulses are clearly narrative in nature, others lyrical or polemical. Hence (for me): fiction, poem, essay. At other times it’s harder to be sure, and often I make false starts. Occasionally an impulse finds its way into two or more different genres: lately I’ve been writing some angry, political poems that use material that has also appeared in essays and at the same time formed the thematic substrate of my last novel, Every Lost Country.
OB:
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a writer?
SH:
I’m hopeless at answering questions like “What’s your favourite novel,” “What’s the best film you ever saw,” etc. All I can do is draw up shortlists — and with this question that would make for a long answer. So I’ll cite the first thing that comes to mind: “Locate your material.” Norman Levine said it and he was talking about a fiction writer’s staple task: to find your true material and mine it for the rest of your life.
OB:
Who are some people who have deeply influenced (fellow writers or not) your writing life?
SH:
See above, under “hopeless.” This time, if I try to make a shortlist, I’m sure to leave somebody off, so I’ll sidestep humanity altogether and cite my daily companion — a lupomorphic animal shelter adoptee called Isla. I’m serious. Here’s something I wrote in a recent email to poet Christopher Patton: “These days I'm spending as much time as possible walking, running barefoot, swimming etc, usually with my dog, all in an effort to wash out of and off myself the toxic effects of years of overthinking and tedious screentime. Bear with me here. I'm not about to enroll in any Bly-type naked conga weekends; the point, for me, is to be as unselfconscious and free of persona as possible, as often as possible — hence the hours of solitude or with the dog, away from city, colleagues, friends, even family.
The dog has influenced my writing life by helping to make me calmer and simpler. I do fewer drafts of stories and poems than I used to, because (I believe) my thinking is less skittery, distracted, manic and neurotic.
OB:
Is there a book you’ve read recently that you wished you had written?
SH:
This is my Year of Reading Unread Classics, so naturally I’ve been encountering a lot of books I’d be thrilled to have written. The most recent: James Salter’s idiosyncratically masterful story collection Dusk. It was published in 1988, so maybe it violates my current moratorium on reading contemporary work, but for Salter I’m willing to fudge it.
OB:
What are you working on now?
SH:
A book of short stories, The Dead Are More Visible, which should be coming out next year. It’s been over fifteen years since I published a book of stories and I’m really happy to be working in the form again.
Steven Heighton books include the novel Every Lost Country (May 2010) and the poetry collection Patient Frame (April 2010). He is also the author of the novel Afterlands, which appeared in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and was a “best of year” selection in ten publications in Canada, the USA, and the UK. The book has recently been optioned for film. He has also published The Shadow Boxer — a Canadian bestseller and a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year for 2002 — which appeared in five countries. He lives with his family in Kingston, Ontario. For more information, please visit his website.
For more information about Workbook please visit the ECW website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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