Jonathan Goldstein’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Nerve. He is a columnist for the National Post and a frequent contributor to the PRI’s This American Life. He’s the author of the short story collection Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! and the novel Lenny Bruce is Dead. His CBC Radio show, WireTap, is now it its ninth season. In his most recent book, I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow, Goldstein recounts the highs and lows of the last year in his thirties.

RUSTY TALK WITH JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN

Melanie Chambers: What is your writing process like?
Jonathan Goldstein: I’m fortunate to have the radio producing aspect of the job to toggle between, so when writing isn’t coming as easily, there’s always other things to do such as cutting tape, hopping in and out of the studio—sometimes they’re welcome. And sometimes they can be distractions. It’s hard to tell when you should just push through or give up and do something else.

Lately, in terms of process, I’m in the middle of writing a monologue to be spoken by a train conductor. The premise is kind of absurd: as the train is pulling into Penn Station, he announces that all the toilets of New York City and the five Burroughs have been shut down by authority of the New York Toilet Authority. The NYTA.  It’s a ridiculous premise, but more often than not, the most satisfying part of writing is actually hearing the work performed by the people that we’re getting to do it. For example, this week’s show I wrote a part for a 14-year-old and found this talented boy named Ezra to perform this piece about falling in love and negotiating your friends during that time when you’re a teenager. I just heard the final mix of it yesterday and that was really gratifying because it turned out really nicely; sometimes they don’t turn out as well as when you hear them in your head, but this time it really matched the way I heard it in my head which is really satisfying.

MC: You’re prolific in print and radio. Which do you prefer?
JG: It really depends. Having the opportunity to write for different venues can really help access different parts of your brain and inspire different ideas. Last summer I was given a chance to go to Bali for a travel website, and I had never done anything for them before, and the editor was great in the sense that he liked my writing and pretty much had given me carte blanche to write about whatever I wanted to.

And having that kind of opportunity you want to step up to it. One of the difficult things about writing for WireTap for so many years—and it creeps up on you—is the persona begins to take over. You become very good at writing in a particular kind of voice. I think of that line of Kurt Vonnegut’s about being careful about the things you pretend to be because you become that thing. I know how to write a particular kind of thing well enough to get the job done in a certain context. It’s a great thing, and it’s the benefit of age, but it can also sort of trap you so having the opportunity of writing for another venue and step outside of the persona can really be exciting.  It’s sort of like going away on a vacation and then coming home; I always think of the radio show as a kind of coming home.

And I like writing for This American Life too because I love writing for my friends who work there—imagining them reading it and trying to make them laugh and thinking about the things that will make them laugh. It’s kind of like a performance and that can really be fun too.

Writing for print, you can be more digressive, and you can try to do things that maybe on the radio you’d fear. On the radio you’re taking people by the hand and you constantly want to be sensitive to the fact that quite possibly they are multi-tasking: sitting in traffic, doing dishes. You want to keep them on board whereas writing for the page you have someone’s undivided attention. I guess you can attempt different kinds of things because of that.

MC: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
JG: I started writing at a very young age. And I think I was lucky enough to know that was what I liked to do. My first memory is of writing a poem in grade five and having the teacher have me read it out loud in class. What connected me [to that moment], was the actual act of reading it out loud; hand-in-hand with my first experience with writing was performing the writing, if you want to call it that. I think it was the first time I ever felt that kind of specialness. I wasn’t a great student, and I felt like it was the first time that everyone in the class was looking at me but in a positive way and the teacher was singling me out. I remember that feeling of being looked at in that particular kind of way.

That was a new feeling and I think I liked it.

I think it’s also connected to how my mind works: I’m not very good in the moment, and I’m the kind of person who thinks constantly, regretful about the things I should have said. Writing is a way of slowing down time and getting it right in a way—revisiting the past and having the time to pour over a particular moment. And, do it justice in retrospect. As far as being an introvert, when I think about my truest self, which always takes us back to childhood, I think about a kid by himself in his room. Coming into my 40s, I think I enjoy people. I think now I feel freer with people. I feel more comfortable expressing my enjoyment of people. That’s all there is. There is a great quote I remember Tom Wolfe speaking on 60 Minutes. He said: “our soul is our relationship to other people.” I think it’s true. That’s kind of why it’s worth going out into the world.

MC: What do you think about the Internet print medium, and what will it do to print journalism?
JG: The first book I ever published was from Coach House in Toronto; they do small experimental titles. This was back in the 90s, maybe even the mid 90s, and I remember the guy who ran the press, now in retrospect I realize he was quite forward looking, but the Internet was something quite new, and he was discussing the possibility of maybe publishing my book as an e-book. I never even heard of such a thing, and I didn’t know the commerce of it all. They had an authors’ tip jar you could put your credit card in, and I remember thinking, this doesn’t appeal to me. I wanted to get published. I wanted to have a book. It was so synonymous with being out in the world and being published. And I remember he referred to the book as the fetish object known as the book, and it just seemed so far thrown to me and now it doesn’t seem as crazy. And, in fact, I love reading on my iPhone. I don’t have an iPad and I don’t have an e-reader. It’s [iPhone] in my pocket, and I’m obsessed with reading, so this way when I’m on the subway or eating, I can always be reading something.

The last thing I read on my iPhone was The Onion AV Club.        

MC: Where did you come up with the idea and why did you decide to write about turning 40?
JG: I guess that was the next thing that was happening and that was an easy pitchable single sentence kind of thing. Had I been turning 30, I don’t think it would have had the same type of gravity. But, the truth is, not much changes. The book starts on that note or sort of how most of the time we’re not thinking about how old we are and we kind of are all ages at once. I think the irony in writing about turning 40, the conclusion that I came to, is that I guess you’re never going to feel as though you’ve arrived. I mean 40 when you’re 20 means a different thing then when you’re at 40. So which definition do you adhere to?

I’m thinking of a particular episode of Taxi, a great show from the 80s. Bobby [a taxi driver] had given himself five years in New York to become an actor and this was the week that the five-year limit was up. So, he goes on a binge of auditions in the hopes of giving it a big push, and at the end of the week, he gets no callbacks and nothing happens. It’s kind of a sad moment, then he picks up his head, and says, “you know what? I’m going to give myself another five years.” You might think, my life isn’t where I thought it would be at the end of my 30s, but life isn’t over and you can give yourself more time—it’s a gift to yourself. No one can count you out as long as you don’t count yourself out. There is a lot of unhappiness brought about thinking you have to be at a certain place.

Look at Michelangelo’s early sculptures verses the later stuff. If you look at an early pieta, like when he’s in his early 20s, it’s like showcasing every single thing that he could do, and it’s incredible. The later stuff is simpler; it’s like he has less to prove. There depth that comes out of that, too.

MC: What is your advice for young writers?
JG: The 20s are a good time for living, and you’re going to be drawing from that later on. You might as well be pursuing your passions and figuring what the hell you want to do so that maybe in your 30s you can get going in some real way, but maybe that’s my experience because I didn’t have a job in the field I wanted to work in until my 30s. Sometimes it’s easy to be dismissive of the things that you’re naturally good at or to undervalue them. And I’m thinking of Edgar Allen Poe. He always wanted to be a poet. He looked at his short stories, a genre that he kind of invented, as just a means to paying the bills. I don’t think he took it as seriously.  But, in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter.

And, I also think what separates the pros from the amateurs is being able to write in spite of inspiration—when it doesn’t feel like a hot time and you’re struggling through something. And again, there’s a nice democracy there because I’ve written things that were like pulling teeth that ended up being as okay as say something that I wrote in a moment of inspiration. Sometimes those things that you write in the moment of inspiration are really fun, in and of themselves, to have written them. The experience was great, but it doesn’t really mean they were great. That is a thought that keeps me going because on some days I think, how can I possibly be writing anything of worth when I’m feeling as poorly as I do or just not feeling good about what I am writing? But just knowing that if you put it aside and then look at it some time afterwards, you might be surprised.

Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011) is CORNELIA HOOGLAND'S 6th book of poetry, and is based on the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood. Fountainhead Theatre in London Ontario is producing Red’s Canadian premiere in May 2013. Hoogland’s poetry, as well as her nonfiction, fiction and plays have been published and performed internationally. Cornelia has received writing awards from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and selections from her 6 books of poetry, two chapbooks and nonfiction have won numerous literary competitions and have been shortlisted for various CBC literary competitions, the Relit awards, and the National Magazine Awards. Cornelia has taught writing and literature at the University of Western Ontario, UBC Okanagan, Simon Fraser University, and has led seminars, workshops and tutorials at festivals and school districts. She lives on Hornby Island with her visual artist husband Ted Goodden and dog Drummer. Visit Cornelia online at her website, at her Woods Wolf Girl site, and on Facebook.

RUSTY TALK WITH CORNELIA HOOGLAND

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Cornelia Hoogland: I remember tracing the colour blue from its starting point above the clouds, to the mountains, the ocean, the Douglas-fir trees, grains of sand, the beach towel and then the colour splintering into my child’s blue eyes. Speaking of one thing in terms of another – what a miracle is metaphor. The blue poem took place at Rathtrevor Beach on Vancouver Island 35 years ago. I lost that poem and yet—have lived it all these years. Following where the line, idea, colour, word takes me. 

KM: Why did you decide to become a poet/writer?
CH: I received my first diary—one inch by two inches—when I was six. I wrote “Dad bought me a comic.” I am a journal keeper still. Every morning I get up and try to scratch out a few fresh lines. At the Banff Centre for the Arts, Adele Wiseman told my group: “You are all professionals; you’ve all sacrificed to be here in this program. You can call yourself a poet.” Okay, I thought.

KM: Who are you reading now?
CH: Dean Young, Tony Hoagland, Elizabeth Bishop and many other American poets both living and dead. Canadians Nancy Holmes, Julie Berry, Matt Radar. Alice Oswald, Jack Gilbert, David Harsent writers I admire. My daily literary experiences are often online, however. I read Poetry Daily and follow up the poems onto the Amazon or Google sites where I can read (often) more poems. 

KM: What do you feel influences your writing the most?
CH: My antenna for lines, images, verbs, rhythm, dynamics, juxtaposition. Always on the look-out for the next poetic bread crumb. Reading and hearing other poets, and listening to children. Children say the best things, but I have a long ways to go to hear them properly. I also attend to wolves, dogs, crows. Learning how to write nature poetry, or use natural images, is one of our biggest literary challenge today.

KM: Can you describe your writing process? How does revision figure into the process?
CH: In writing and editing Woods Wolf Girl (Wolsak and Wynn, 2011), I realized more deeply than I did before the complex relationship between experience and form. Although the poems were written as monologues (Red, Mother, and the Woodsman), finding their voices was by way of delving more deeply into my own.

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given that you use?
CH: Understanding that poetry is a set of strategies (such as pattern, affect, density).  Poetry doesn’t exist to teach us how to live (although it might) or even to show us the world we inhabit (though it might). Poetry is the dynamics of released energies, a dramatization of shaped energies.

KM: What is your favourite or funniest literary moment, if you have one?
CH: As the director of Poetry London in London, Ontario, I experienced many hilarious moments. Despite detailed emails to visiting poets outlining the program, the expectations, the times, directions and so forth, actually getting the writers from their cities to the London podium could involve tens of emails, an intricate cell phone game the days before and of the reading, great poetic anxiety about directions and schedule, food sensitivities revealed once seated at the restaurant, amazing requests to be driven to antique shops or delicatessens, and so forth. What I loved was the moment said famous authors walked on stage, they were immediately professional, engaging, charming, mannered and poised. The audience loved each of them; in fact, the more troublesome ones were the most sensational! Amazingly, hosts across Canada do similar work on any given night of the week and all for free. 

KM:Tell us about your play, Red.
CH: Red is having its Canadian premiere on May 10–18, 2013, in London Ontario. Fountainhead Theatre is producing the play (John Gerry, director). Tickets available at onstagedirect.com

I started writing the play using scenes from Woods Wolf Girl, but the play quickly took on a life of its own and bears little resemblance to the book.

Red Riding Hood’s multiple identities throughout the ages, and the plethora of attitudes toward her inform this play. Innocent, sexual, chaste, (chased), unchaste, the girl to blame, fearless, the girl who ‘asked-for-it’, Red (the girl) is also the wolf, the wilderness is inside her. The character Red is not limited in costume, posture, attitude, or age. Arguably the world’s most popular, and most retold, fairy tale, interpreted into countless versions in over 40 different countries over the past nearly 400 years, it transcends cultural barriers. Red takes up complex human concerns, such as how good girls grow up, relationships between mothers and daughters, and the ongoing tensions between agent/victim, eating and/or being eaten. Who is caged, who is protected? (This play is suitable for high school audiences and adults.) For more information please see http://www.facebook.com/cornelia.hoogland.

KM: What are you working on now?
CH: Once again I am turning to the fairy tale for my inspiration. My multimedia project titled Woods Wolf You: A SoundWalk, is an audiowalk through the woods. Aimed to help create ecological awareness in young people as well as feelings of connectedness—ironically using the very technology (personal stereos) often blamed in alienating people from the physical world—the audio walk conjoins the technologies of sound, the power of the fairy tale Red Riding Hood, and site-specific performance. 

I’m delighted that London’s own Baseline Press will be publishing my chapbook, Sea Level, in 2013. Sea Level was shortlisted for the CBC literary nonfiction awards in 2012. Karen Schindler is creating one of the most exciting chapbook presses in Canada, and I’m delighted.

CORNELIA HOOGLAND'S RECENT POERTY BOOK

Woods Wolf Girl, Wolsak and Wynn, 2011

From the Publisher:
Cornelia Hoogland takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood and turns it inside out in this sensuous Canadian retelling. The woods and wolves are vivid and real, while Red herself is anything but a one dimensional girl-child. A meditation on innocence and its loss, and on the power of the green wilderness, Woods Wolf Girl uses striking lyric poetry to expose the heart of the original fairy tale.

About Woods Wolf Girl:
“Red Riding Hood like you’ve never encountered her before. Hoogland has nailed it in this chilling contemporary retelling of the age-old tale. Layered and smart as hell.”   (Jeanette Lynes).

Woods Wolf Girl is an arresting new book of poems from Cornelia Hoogland. The plot that threads through the poems draws from Red Riding Hood, but the story is ultimately Canadian. It is a lyrical work that exposes the wilderness of the Canadian landscape to a new immigrant, and shows the equally dangerous transition from girlhood to womanhood.

Woods Wolf Girl retells the journey from mother’s house to grandmother’s house through the woods from the points of view of the girl and her immigrant mother. These poems occur on the path of experience: experience that may lurk in the form of wolf/men--who are especially dangerous to good girls. While the wolf is ultimately bad news (and then simply tired news, as in the scene in the grocery store), he initiates the girl into experience, the good with the bad.

JACOB WREN is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include: Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed. As co-artistic director of Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART he has co-created the performances: En français comme en anglais, it's easy to criticize (1998), the HOSPITALITÉ / HOSPITALITY series including Individualism Was A Mistake (2008) and The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (2011) and Every Song I’ve Ever Written (2012). He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art.



RUSTY TALK WITH JACOB WREN

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively or being creative?
Jacob Wren: I don’t know if I have a first memory. But I do know around age thirteen I started suffering from terrible insomnia. Some nights I didn’t sleep at all, while most nights I slept very little. And basically I just filled the endless, sleepless nights with reading and writing, for more or less ten years, until I realized that the simple cure for my insomnia was rigorous physical exercise. Still, to this day, I associate writing with the strange, hallucinatory state that comes from having barely slept for weeks on end, as a kind of unreal trance, almost like a dream. It was during those nights, lying awake, almost too tired to move, that I first trained myself to write.

KM: Why did you become an artist/writer and what keeps you going?
JW: To be honest, the only thing that has ever really interested me was art (in all its many forms.) I wish I could become interested in something else, since I feel, as a human being, at times this overemphasis on artistic interests makes me a bit narrow, as well as making my interactions with other people often rather difficult. (I mean, I do my best.)

At the same time, I find it very hard to maintain any interest in art and often don’t know exactly what keeps me going (except that I have no idea what else I could possibly do). Sometimes I remind myself a bit of this apocryphal story of a Russian who moved to New York but never learned English. Gradually, over the course of his life, he forgot how to speak Russian, yet still never learned English, so in the end he spoke no language at all. Gradually I am becoming less and less interested in art, while not really becoming interested in anything else, so in the end I’m kind of nowhere. Like a priest who has lost faith. But that makes it all sound more dire than it actually is. Still, I think it’s important that we talk about these things, since hardly anyone ever does.

I have often said that I don’t particularly relate to people who make performance, or write, or make art, but I do relate to people who make performance / writing / art who think about quitting every fifteen seconds. Those are really my people. I call us the ‘boy who cried wolf set’. Because, for me, if you really look at art today, at what it means, at who it reaches, at what is considered successful or important, it often seems like a complete waste of time. If I had any talent for it, or drive towards it, I would definitely quit art and become an activist, since the world’s problems are now so overwhelming, immediate and tragic. But, for better or worse, I can’t seem to get myself to do anything else: all I can really do is write. (Well, I also make performances, but that becomes harder and harder as the years roll on.)

KM: How would you describe your writing process?  How does your blog A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality fit into this process?
JW: I mainly feel like I don’t really have a process. I just have ideas and write them down to the best of my ability. Often I try to write every morning, but then, at other times, I am stuck for months on end and write very little. I usually do a first draft in a notebook, and then type it up as I go. Sometimes there is a little bit of re-writing as I type it into the computer, but mainly the second draft just allows me to think more about what I’m doing.

I definitely started my blog, in 2005, because I had almost completely stopped writing and was looking for a way to start again. It’s always been difficult for me to get published—I suppose what I write doesn’t quite fit anywhere (maybe it’s a little bit easier now, I’m not sure)—but at the time being able to just post what I was writing on my blog, as I went along, gave me more of a feeling that I was actually doing something. I would tell myself: just write one paragraph and post it, then at least you will have written one paragraph. It kind of made me feel like writing was possible again, after having felt it was basically impossible for many years. (Mainly due to too many rejection letters, or more precisely to the fact that I’m a little bit too sensitive to such things.) Now my blog gets about 2,000 hits a month, so that must mean someone is reading it, but I don’t really have any sense of who is reading it, why, or what they think. There are hardly any comments.

I spend so much time on the internet (mainly on Facebook and listening to music), and I know this has deeply affected how I think about art, about writing, and also how I practice it. It is difficult for me to really analyze what this change might be, it has all been so natural and intuitive, but I know there is something about the shuffle feature on iTunes, and about the seeming randomness as one clicks from one link to the next, that has been completely folded into my aesthetic.

KM: What or who influences your writing?
JW: I keep an ongoing list of favourite books: Some Favourite Books

And recently I have added a list of visual artists: List of Artists

But mainly I just want to devour everything. I want to have an overview. I want to know what is happening in art today, and everything that has ever happened in art before, and I want to use all of it while at the same time making it my own. I want to speak about the world, about the world today and about history, about ideas, thinking, philosophy, theory, and about my own subjective experiences. I want to struggle with it, admit to failure, be upset that I am not as good as the artists and authors I love but keep trying. I wish the mainstream was more open and more interesting.

KM: Can you discuss the relationship between writer and reader or audience? Who would be your ideal reader? I’m interested also in terms of your blog and its readership. Does that audience inform your work in any way?
JW: I have a sort of double life, half writing, the other half performing. When you perform the audience is right there in front of you, and all of my performance work is about trying to honestly deal with the fact that the audience is right there in front of me, about the paradox of trying to be yourself in the deeply unnatural situation of a room full of strangers watching you.

I’ve always like the Gertrude Stein quote: “I write for myself and strangers.”

When I was revising my last book, I showed it to a bunch of friends for comments, and I listened to all of their comments, and later, when the book came out, realized I had completely ignored basically all of their suggestions. I had asked for their help, and then completely ignored everything they said. (Well, I’ve always been stubborn.) And I feel this is so often the way between me and readers, I listen to every comment I get, think about it, try to take it in, fully absorb it, but never directly respond to anything anyone says. Nonetheless, I very much hope it is all in there anyway, somewhere in my head, affecting what I think, how I see what I’m doing, in some completely indirect way making the work better.

KM: What is the best piece of literary advice you’ve gotten that you actually use?
JW: As I’ve already suggested, I’m so bad with taking advice. But I really liked reading what Alain Badiou once said in an interview. He said the only rule for activism is: keep going. And I guess that’s mainly what I try to do now, keep going, which also means not making too many compromises, trying to offer up something different enough from everything else out there, trying to see the world a different way and put it into words. But, then again, I also constantly want to quit. Which is maybe why the advice is so important. Keep going.

KM: What is your favourite or funniest literary moment, if you have one?
JW: I actually can’t think of anything at the moment. Hopefully that means there are many favourite, hilarious literary moments to come. Maybe the future will be full of them.

KM: What are you reading at the moment?
JW: I just started reading The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal by Sean Mills. I believe I must be reading it because I live in Montreal. So far it’s fascinating.

KM: What projects are you working on in 2013?
JW: I am writing a new book entitled Polyamorous Love Song. Here is a short synopsis: It is a book of many different narrative through-lines. For example: 1) A mysterious group, known as The Mascot Front, who wear furry mascot costumes at all times and are fighting a revolutionary war for their right to wear furry mascot costumes at all times. 2) A movement known as the ‘New Filmmaking’ in which, instead of shooting and editing a film, one simply does all of the things that would have been in the film, but in real life. This movement has many adherents. Its founder is known only as Filmmaker A. 3) A group of ‘New Filmmakers’, calling themselves The Centre for Productive Compromise, who devise increasingly strange sexual scenarios with complete strangers. They invent a drug that allows them to intuit the cell phone number of anyone they see, allowing phone calls to be the first stage of their spontaneous, yet somehow carefully scripted, seductions. 4) A secret society that concocts a sexually transmitted virus that infects only those on the political right. They stage large-scale orgies, creating unexpected intimacies and connections between individuals who are otherwise savagely opposed to one another. 5) A radical leftist who catches this virus, forcing her to question the depth of her considerable leftist credentials. 6) A German barber in New York who, out of scorn for the stupidity of his American clients, gives them avant-garde haircuts, unintentionally achieving acclaim among the bohemian set who consider his haircuts to be strange works of art. And yet each of these stories is only the beginning.

And we are also beginning a new, ongoing internet/performance project entitled Every Song I’ve Ever Written. Here is a description:

From 1985 to 2004 Jacob Wren wrote songs. Lots and lots of songs. At the time not very many people heard them. Every Song I’ve Ever Written is a project about memory, history, things that may or may not exist, songwriting, the internet and pop culture. On the website everysongiveeverwritten.com you can listen to, and download, these songs.

In a way, because hardly anyone heard them, these songs don’t yet exist. If you are reading this, we would like you to consider recording your own version of one of these songs, changing it, making it your own, then sending it to us. We will post every version we receive.

There will also be performances and events. Solo performances will feature Jacob performing all of the songs in chronological order (it takes about five hours.) Band Nights will feature a series of local bands in different cities performing one of Jacob’s songs each. After each version, Jacob will interview the band about what it was like to cover the song, and the band will interview Jacob about what it was like to write it.

We are not doing this because we think these are the best songs ever (we hope at least a few of them are good.) We are doing this because hardly anyone heard them at the time, and we are wondering if there is some new, strange way to bring them out into the world. In doing so we hope to raise a few questions about what songs mean on the internet, about what songwriting is actually like today, and also take a sidelong glance back at the recent past.

LINKS
Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality
Every Song I've Ever Written
PME-ART
Tumblr
Goodreads
Le Quartanier

REVENGE FANTASIES OF THE POLITICALLY DISPOSSESSED
Pedlar Press, 2010

Description from Pedlar Press:
Set in a dystopian near-future, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is a novel - a kind of post-capitalist soap opera - about a group of people who regularly attend ''the meetings.'' At the meetings they have agreed to talk, and only talk, about how to re-ignite the left, for fear if they were to do more, if they were to actually engage in real acts of resistance or activism, they would be arrested, imprisoned, or worse. Revenge Fantasies is a book about community. It is also a book about fear. Characters leave the meetings and we follow them out into their lives. The characters we see most frequently are the Doctor, the Writer and the Third Wheel. As the book progresses we see these characters, and others, disengage and re-engage with questions the meetings have brought into their lives. The Doctor ends up running a reality television show about political activism. The Third Wheel ends up in an unnamed Latin American country, trying to make things better but possibly making them worse. The Writer ends up in jail for writing a book that suggests it is politically emancipatory for teachers to sleep with their students. And throughout all of this the meetings continue: aimless, thoughtful, disturbing, trying to keep a feeling of hope and potential alive in what begin to look like increasingly dark times. Revenge Fantasies asks us to think about why so many of us today, even those with a genuine interest in political questions, feel so deeply powerless to change and affect the world that surrounds us, suggesting that, even within such feelings of relative powerlessness, there can still be energizing surges of emancipation and action

Roddy Doyle was born in 1958. His work includes The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Booker Prize, 1993), The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, A Star Called Henry, and Bullfighting.  His latest book is Two Pints (2012).  A new novel, The Guts, will be published in August, in Ireland and the UK, and early 2014 in the USA.  He divides his time between Dublin and confusion.

RUSTY TALK WITH RODDY DOYLE

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Roddy Doyle: I was about ten, I think, and my teacher, Mr. Kennedy, told the class to write something about a rainy day. This was Ireland, remember, so deep research wasn’t necessary. There were fifty-four boys in the class, and it was the first time we’d been told to write, or compose, anything—to make it up.  I wrote about boredom.  Mr. Kennedy looked over my shoulder, then read it to the class. 

KM: Why did you become a writer?
RD: I loved reading.  I loved football—soccer—but was a hopeless player. I loved music but hadn’t the patience or ability to learn an instrument. But I was literate, so writing seemed like an easy option. I forced myself into the habit, the routine.

KM: What is the best writing advice that you’ve gotten that you actually use?
RD: Treat it as a job; don’t expect magic.

KM: How do you approach revision?
RD: If by ‘revision’ you mean editing, I love it. So I approach it with a full heart and a red ballpoint. I tend to, deliberately, write too much. Editing is often a case of paring back. I’m fascinated, and sometimes worried, about how the deletion or addition of a word can alter meaning, tone, everything. When I’m editing, I put all other work aside and concentrate only on the pages I’m editing. I don’t play music, and I often lose track of time.

KM: Your books often come out within a few years of each other. Do you work on multiple projects at the same time or stick to one project until it’s complete? Do you have difficultly switching from one genre to the next—particularly from adult fiction to children’s literature?
RD: I work on different projects at the same time; I divide my working day, about 9am to 6pm, into chunks. As long as the projects are very different, they don’t tend to infect each other. I play a different type of music for each project. I could, I suppose, change shirts too, but that might be going too far. So, I can work for several hours on a novel, save it, hang out the washing, make a cup of coffee, change the Rolling Stones for Steve Reich, and get working on a treatment for a possible TV series or a book for children. 

KM: What writers were influential when you first started writing? Who are you reading now?
RD: I think Flann O’Brien was important, particularly the Dublin dialogue in At Swim-Two-Birds. E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime was important—the simplicity of the language. I’ve just finished George Saunders’ collection, Tenth of December; I think it’s magnificent. I’m reading a collection of J.G. Ballard interviews, called Extreme Metaphors. It’s great. 

KM: Given the amount of books that you’ve written, it seems impossible to imagine, but do you ever get writer’s block? And if you do, how do you overcome it?
RD: No—never.

KM: Do you ever abandon projects? If so, how do you know when it’s time to move on?
RD: I’ve never abandoned, but I’ve parked projects for a while, stayed away from them until I was ready to look at them with that mixture of calm and excitement that I need if I’m going to work. Because I work on several things during the day, if one project isn’t going well, I can focus on another. 

KM: We often talk about the difficulty of rejection for writers but what about the problems that success can bring? After you won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for instance, what was it like sitting back down at the writing desk?
RD: Success, however we measure it, is much nicer than rejection. But rejection can be like fuel to an almost empty engine. Rejection is a cousin of determination, and it’s part of the job. Success is too, if you’re lucky.  The trick is, I think, to ignore it when you’re at your desk. I never let myself think that, just because I’ve won a prize, I’m not capable of writing shit. After winning the Booker, I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I love the work. 

KM: You posted your latest work Two Pints, which was just published in its entirety in November, as a serial on Facebook over the last year and half. Why did you decide to do this and what was the process like for you? Did the process have any affect on the end product? In other words, did the reader comments influence revisions? Would you do it again with another project?
RD: I wrote the Two Pints pieces for fun.  Someone suggested they’d make a good book, so—grand. It’s an accidental book, and still fun. I still write the Two Pints pieces, when the mood hits me and I have time. I often compose them as I’m walking, say, from the city centre, home. I type them up, make sure they’re less than 200 words, then post them on Facebook. I like the near-spontaneity of it—very different from how I normally work. It’s a little madness. I didn’t revise them, so reader comments, while nice, had no influence on them. I’d never be tempted to put work-in-progress up on Facebook. I don’t want to know what readers think until I know the work is finished.

KM: What are you working on now?
RD: I’ve just finished a novel, called The Guts. It’ll be out here and the UK in August, and the USA early in 2014. I’m writing a short story, about a man who’s injured when another man, in Lycra, cycles into him.  I’m also working on a treatment for a possible TV series. ‘Possible’ is code for ‘It’ll never be made.’  I’m enjoying the job. Later this year, a musical based on my book, The Commitments, will go into rehearsal.  I wrote the script, the ‘book’, so that will take up a lot of my time.  I’m very excited about it. I’m tempted to say ‘I can’t wait’ but, actually, I can—just.

RODDY DOYLE'S LATEST BOOK
Two Pints, published by Jonathan Cape, Vintage Publishing, 2012

Description from the publisher:
Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss… They talk about their wives, their kids, their kids’ pets, their football teams and--this being Ireland in 2011–12--about the euro, the crash, the presidential election, the Queen’s visit. But these men are not parochial or small-minded; one of them knows where to find the missing Colonel Gaddafi (he’s working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport); they worry about Greek debt, the IMF and the bondholders
(whatever they might be); in their fashion, they mourn the deaths of Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Davy Jones and Robin Gibb; and they ask each other the really important questions like ‘Would you ever let yourself be digitally enhanced?’

Inspired by a year’s worth of news, Two Pints distils the essence of Roddy Doyle’s comic genius. This book shares the concision of a collection of poems, and the timing of a virtuoso comedian.

Linda Svendsen's linked collection, Marine Life, was published in Canada, the United States and Germany and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Saturday Night, O. Henry Prize Stories, Best Canadian Stories and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Marine Life was nominated for the LA Times First Book Award and released as a feature film. Svendsen’s TV writing credits include adaptations of The Diviners, At the End of the Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story, and she co-produced and co-wrote the miniseries Human Cargo, which garnered seven Gemini Awards and a George Foster Peabody Award. She received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. Svendsen is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

RUSTY TALK WITH LINDA SVENDSEN

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Linda Svendsen: In Grade 2, we were asked to write a rhyming poem and I had so much fun doing it that I went on for a dozen stanzas. Building on this major breakthrough, in Grade 3 I tried to write a sequel to Tom Sawyer in which Becky and Tom married (roughly 6 pages of careful heartfelt printing).

KM: Why did you decide to become a writer?
LS: I don't think I ever decided to become a writer; it's happened by default and I still wonder how it's all going to turn out. All I know is that I really enjoy writing fiction and for screen and that it allows me to pursue all the other activities I considered such as acting, directing, producing, social work, anthropology, history, etc.  

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given that you use?
LS: Nancy Packer, fiction writer (and mother of New Yorker writer George Packer and novelist Ann Packer) told me to take my characters to the cliff.  And push them over.

KM: Your new novel, Sussex Drive, is a political satire offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at Canadian politics. Why did you decide to take on this subject matter? What do you hope readers take away from it?
LS: Sussex Drive was inspired by Canada's federal prorogue-a-palooza in 2008 and 2009. It's about a Conservative Prime Minister's wife and a left-wing Governor General and what happens when they can no longer play "Follow the Leader." I was very intrigued by the Governor General's role and decision-making in December 2008—would she or wouldn't she allow the Harper government to fall and the coalition to take power? Also, as Canadians, we're immersed in the entertainment/propaganda of the U.S. and U.K. (and their political figures with The King's Speech, The Queen, Game Change) and our own turf seemed rich and virtually unexplored. And it's chick lit, too, for canuckleheads.

KM: Sussex Drive reads like it’s written by a political insider. How did you approach the research for this project? Can you tell us about the process of writing this book?
LS: Sussex started out as a short story after December 2008 and headed toward novella length. After the 2009 prorogation, it became a novel and I visited Ottawa—the Parliament Buildings, Rideau Hall, Gatineau Lake, Museum of Civilization, the War Museum, and Rockcliffe Park. I happened to be in London in April 2009 during the G-20 and found it fascinating that the Canadians seemed to be invisible to the British press. Random House Canada bought the novel in October 2011 when I had 140 pages written; I wrote from January to June 2012 (my editors were amazing!) and it was published last October. Tight deadline!

KM: Many reviewers have commented on the sharp dialogue in Sussex Drive. In addition to writing fiction, you’re also an awarding-winning screenwriter. Do you plan on adapting Sussex Drive for film or television? If so, how do you plan on approaching the adaptation?
LS: I'm trying to talk my husband into producing Sussex Drive, but he's busy with other projects right now. 6 x 1 hour or a TV movie...fingers crossed!    

KM: What are you working on now?
LS: Right now I'm deciding what novel I'm writing next. Great space to be in.

For many years LISA ROBERTSON has worked across disciplines and often in collaboration. With the late Stacy Doris she was the Perfume Recordist, an ongoing sound performance and writing project with work in the new I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women. She worked as The Office for Soft Architecture, publishing reports, essays, walks and manifestoes as well as curating and cooking as OSA. Currently she is translating the French linguists Emile Benveniste and Henri Meschonnic with Avra Spector. Her most recent book of poetry is R's Boat, from University of California Press, and Bookthug published a new book of essays, Nilling, in spring 2012. She lives in rural France, and teaches at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.


RUSTY TALK WITH LISA ROBERTSON

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively or being creative?
Lisa Robertson: I think my earliest creative acts were acts of deception and truth bending—petty theft, rebuttal, cover-up. This led directly to writing.

KM: Could you describe your writing process? (For example, do you write every day? When? Where? How do you approach revision, etc.)
LR: Everyday I sit in an armchair and write in a notebook as I read. If somebody gives me resources I leave the armchair and travel to read in an exotic library. Writing on trains and airplanes on the way to and from these libraries is a special pleasure, because so much anticipation and repletion is involved. Talking to my friends usually shows me how to work with the material I have gathered. My dearest friends are the ones I simply obey.

KM: How would you define experimental writing?
LR: I wouldn't define experimental writing. It would cease to be experimental then.

KM: What influences your work?
LR: Unanswerable questions. Unanswerable to me that is. Right now I am trying to understand the movement a triangle sections, and I am trying to understand the humoural system of medicine. Put more simply, desire influences my work.

KM: What have you read recently that excites you?
LR: I just spent a month reading at the Warburg Institute in London, for 6-8 hours a day, six days a week. Everything excited me. I was reading about the relationships between geometry, astronomy, optics, and medicine in the ancient world, until the baroque era and Johannes Kepler's work on the elliptical orbits. I wanted to understand the dynamics of the ellipse, and I wanted to understand science as a relational query into the structure of the cosmos, rather than a recitation of the mechanics of cause and effect. Plato's Timeaus is hallucinogenic in that respect. So is Kepler's The Six-Sided Snowflake. So is medieval Arabic optics. These studies are enticing me to draw more, and that is a pleasure.

In terms of recent poetry—Erin Moure's translations of Galician poet Chus Pato, Aisha Sasha John's new work, Angela Carr, the American poet Chris Nealon, and Francis Ponge. I read Ponge as a contemporary.

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you've heard or been given that you actually use?
LR: Writing is the good use of boredom. I try to have a boring life. I don't socialize, and I eat nine servings of vegetables a day.

KM: Your funniest or favourite literary moment, if you have one.
LR: When Jam Ismael read at KSW in 2002 she sat a tape recorder on a windowsill and played a cassette recording of New Delhi crows. Vancouver crows came to the open window to listen and respond. Every emotion cracked open at once.

KM: What are you working on now?
LR: I am simply reading and learning, and making the occasional paragraph or drawing as record and exploration.

LISA ROBERTSON'S MOST RECENT BOOK
Nilling, Bookthug, 2012

Description from the publisher:
Nilling: Prose is a sequence of 6 loosely linked prose essays about noise, pornography, the codex, melancholy, Lucretius, folds, cities and related aporias: in short, these are essays on reading.

Excerpts from Nilling:

EXCERPT 1
I have tried to make a sketch or a model in several dimensions of the potency of Arendt's idea of invisibility, the necessary inconspicuousness of thinking and reading, and the ambivalently joyous and knotted agency to be found there. Just beneath the surface of the phonemes, a gendered name rhythmically explodes into a founding variousness. And then the strictures of the text assert again themselves. I want to claim for this inconspicuousness a transformational agency that runs counter to the teleology of readerly intention. Syllables might call to gods who do and don't exist. That is, they appear in the text's absences and densities as a motile graphic and phonemic force that abnegates its own necessity. Overwhelmingly in my submission to reading's supple snare, I feel love.

EXCERPT 2
In the facsimile Oblongus Codex, at the bottom margin on the page containing lines 1140-1159 of the fourth book of De rerum natura, I saw what at first appeared to be the photographed image of a small oval hole about the size and shape of my thumbnail, tidily cut from the vellum of the original. Bordering this ellipse, I saw a faint drawing that added a labial ornamental border around the shape. It seemed that some sort of monkish pornographic doodle had been censored. At closer examination I realized that the elliptical absence had in fact not been cut from the page by some historical censor--it was rather a flaw inherent in the structure of the vellum; the trace of a wound perhaps. Several of these photographed images of material mise-en-abimes appeared as I leafed through the codex. In each case the page was cut from the larger skin so that the scar found its place in a margin, so as not to interfere with the scribe’s work. But here in book four, the scribe had decorated the flaw in the skin with this mildly and endearingly erotic doodle. The tiny absence was animated: a lacework.

bill bissett born on lunaria sum 4oo yeers ago approximatelee in lunarian
time was sent 2 erth on first childrns shuttul from th at that time
trubuld planet  landid in halifax   moovd 2 vancouvr at 17   moovd
2 london wher i was part uv luddites  alternativ rock band  thn
toronto wher ium poet in residens at workman arts & recording
with pete dako   wanting alwayze 2 xploor words n sounds n
image in th writing n painting   showing paintings at th secret
handshake art galleree toronto most recent book    novel    from talonbooks  

rusty talk with bill bissett


I asked bill bissett these questions about his writing process:

• What is your first memory of being creative—in terms of writing creatively or making art or music?
• Why did you become a writer and artist? What writers/poets/artists were influential to you when you first started out? Who are you reading now?
• Can you describe your writing process?
  
• Have you ever experienced a creative block and what did you do to get out of it?
  
• You work in a variety of genres and mediums, and your work has been described, among other things, as defying genre. How do you see your relationship between medium and genre in your work? Does the subject dictate the genre or vice versa? Or does it develop naturally?
  
• What are you working on now?
  

He responded by email over the month of September 2012:

dere kathryn   th first 2 qwestyuns 4 rustee talk  mor as it cums in
th first creativ work i remembr  was in grade 3 or 4  b4 going in2 th hospital 4 a coupul uv yeers was a pome i wrote abt sail boats in th watr  n th feeling in my brain n heart was veree thrilling 4 me  an elixr reelee

thn a littul whil latr  aftr mor thn a few operaysyuns  i was in th oxygen tent  n realizing i wud nevr b a dansr n or a figur skatr  my first reel ambishyuns   i cud write n paint i thot  n that way feel th line mooving thru space  n that way as well feeling th taktilitee uv life being physikal th enhansment from th abstraksyuns uv th skripts we wer  ar  all living thru   i wrote my first storee thn in th oxygen tent wher i was deliting 2 drink orange crush n see th brite orange liquid cumming out uv my bodee immediatelee thru mor tubes  i lovd that  n that orange runway made me laff  n feel veree poignant as well as my home planet  lunaria   was veree orange  b4 all us childrn were remoovd from that troubuld planet n sent 2 erth

my first storee wch i wrote in th oxygen  tent was abt a boy who didint want 2 follow rules  n wantid 2 find his own way  n swam out past  th undrtow  wch oftn was both a physikal risk n a metaphor 4 sew manee othr things in nova scotia   n at great dangr  he ovrcame th fors from th watr  n made it 2 shore  n thn vowd he wud dew it agen n agen   sirtinlee if life wer as friabul as it seemd sew definitlee 2 b   why not take th risk

my fathr had th storee typd out in several mor copees   that was my first publishd work   i feel veree warm abt him now  in ths moment  that he did dew that 4 me   n evn tho i didint reelee start writing agen  until aftr my mothr went 2 spirit evn a few yeers aftr that 16     n reelee agen full time until i got 2 vancouvr  17  my yerning 2 b always writing evr sins i was in th oxygen tent  at 10or 11  has nevr left me

influenses medium genre hungree throat mor as it cums in
th subjekt 4 me is th genre n th genre is th subjekt  iuv alwayze wantid 2 put books 2gethr that hold or contain diffrent genres  as iuv also writtn pomes  that contain difrent genres  iuv oftn calld such pomes  fusyun  pomes  my most recent work  novel  my first novel  made me mor aware  uv th medium is th genre n   th genre is th medium  n th medium slash subjekt is th genre  mor aware thn evr  how we write  is can b  what we ar writing abt   mor thn an approach 2  mor thn creating th nuans uv  it is th uv    in my first novel  calld novel  abt 2 yeers ago  brout out by talonbooks  its a collagist work  prob also calld post modernist  in that th linear flow storee line  is part uv th whol work is not th whol work   th whole work inklewds  th modernist storee line  th serch 4 a trew love elements uv gangstr espionage  n th serch  n what happns  evn tho veree labyrinthean    also inklewds essays  sum abt peopul we know  in th known fakshul world  introdusing ideas uv ficksyun fakt identitee   dew we reelee know them  can we  n wch them     is it a fact n pomes  also  like th essays hiliting theems that ar in th storee line    th charaktrs mooving thru space n time  n situaysyuns     n thr is a hi degree uv th elements uv randomness wch th strukshur uv th work  novel conveys inklewds n is conveying

my first biggest  n still biggest influens  is  gertrude stein   who showsd n shows me  espeshulee in stanzas in meditaysyuns  that words need not onlee 2 represent  but  ar in themselvs konstrukts  wch fold  unfold  n refiliing fold  in2  n out uv each othr  ar in fakt puzzuls made uv each othr   sew  they can b on theyr own  not representing   bcumming  n being  what     whats  dew our grammars cum from our emosyuns  n or dew our emosyuns  mostlee reelee cum from our binaree based grammar thees unsolvabul qwestyuns prsist n ar oftn endlesslee interesting  yes

othr huge erlee influenses allen ginsberg   robert duncan  denise levrtov  bob cobbing   diane di prima  sew manee infinitlee manee  d.a. levy  bpNichol  martina clinton  maxine gadd  judith copithorne  influences with    also sew manee    n now 2day  peopul  othr poets i dew reedings with 
sew impressd with  adeena karasick  kai  kellough   sheri- d wilson  ivan coyote   richard van de camp david bateman  naomi laufer  jill mcginn   toshio ushiroguchi-pigott  chadwick juriansz ar names uv amayzing poets that jump 2 mind   helen posno

hungree throat  my nu book  my second novel  is mor  a novel  in meditaysyun   2 charaktrs  alredee found each othr  trying 2 let each othr farthr n furthr in      wun afrayd uv intimasee from his memoreez being 2 chargd  n not let  go uv how hard that is  getting ovr trauma   his bad memoree attacks   drag him away from whom he loves evn from himself in th present   n ths collagist post modernist work  tho not as much prhaps as novel  inklewds  essays  pomes  seeminglee unrelatid help th reedr  n th work 2 reflekt on all th key issews in ths work that cum in2 wun whil reeding hungree throat  

thees 2 books ar sew importnat 2 me kathryn  n i wud reelee like what yu dew with what ium sending yu 2 focus on  hungree throat   as it is cumming out in th spring   2013   from talonbooks   n th nu book ium working on now is in no way a novel    sew thees 2 books ar my 2 novels se far   altho th charaktrs ar diffrent peopul  thees 2 books cud complement each othr th collagist form works veree well 4 me     with th way uv working that can inklewd randomness   qwestyuning identitee  fact ficksyun   4 me thrs an interesting  bredth n spekulaysyun  in ths kind uv working  th tropes  n trajsktoreez  longings  changes  growing  n ungrowing  lyrik  n diffikulteez  n treetment uv th konstruktiv urges   what we konstrukt  what is konstruktid    what we can build 2gethr  n what we can build  n how  what we build  is building us       othr important 2 me writrs  hart crane  e.e. cummings  

latelee ium reeding davisadora by michael ondaatje   his comeing thru slaughter is wun uv my all time favorit books

evr  p.d.james nu book  death comes to pemberley    man about town  by mark merlis   have yu red anne carsons  autobiography of red  anothr uv my all time most adord books  also among th erlier listings touchd on heer  erleer in my life  that is   john rechy  city uv night     also colm toibin wrote an amayzing book i red coupul yeers ago  almost that same titul as john rechy s brilyant  city of night   colm toibin s book titul is  the story of the night      camus  sartre  debeauvoir  gide  wer huge influenses on me as i was growing in my erlee teens  n issac singer   shirley ann grau  truman capote   tenessee williams  william inge  eugene oneil   diane di prima  this kind uv bird flies backwards   shakespere in school  th first sound poetree recording i herd was edith sitwell  facade blew me away   helpd start me out fr sure  as did  n dew all thees peopul  n sew manee mor

sew  hungree throat   is a novel in meditaysyun  th meditaysyun is abt letting go   letting go uv attachment 2 traumatik memoreez  n how can yu moov on  or 4ward if  yu ar klingnig  2 solv  or whatevr  bad  n or haunting memoreez uv th past in wuns life  how thees 2 peopul try 2 love each othr thru th dilemma they ar living  n what happns

intrspersd thru ths meditayshyun   discussyuns  conver

saysyuns  pledges collapses   n regroupings  ar pomes  song  essays   its not a book uv doom but it contains sum doom  n like all us writrs have n dew talk abt thru th ages  how hard 2 love  2 find it  n follow thru with it   its politiks n sankshuaree  part n parts uv th way    my throat is hungree 4 breething    my throat is hungree 4 eeting    my throat is

hungree 4 singing   my throat is hungree 4  yu   

wrap up qwestyuns n answrs 4 rusty talk hope evreethings great w yu Kathryn
maybe 2 wrap up heer 4 th rusty 4 now aneeway   from th beginning i always wantid 2 b writing reelee in approx 7 approaches 2 writing poetree   my main wuns being  sound n vizual   words spred all ovr th page  using th space uv th page as whol blank canvas  not onlee using a porsyun uv that availabul space as square or rektangul  th shape n size uv th copee size   n th book size   th ekonomeez uv   n othr considraysuns have brout th writing in2 lettr size  81/2 x 11 inches   drastikalee  n finding th wayze thru th  availabul transmitting vehikuls  n xpanding wuns repertoire     4 inspiraysyun i follow th vois es uv th work at hand  or th writing godesses n gods who i sew beleev in guide me 2 write   with  novel   whol passages wer literalee diktatid 2 me   sumtimes thrs a lot uv editing as  in th pome 4 hart crane in time   sumtimes thrs almost no editing   th tiny librarians  pome in  novel   went thru seemd ike manee rewrites    othr parts uv  novel  came instantlee    iuv nevr xperiensd a writrs blok  i cant imagine evn how painful that wud b

i just finishd  proof reeding   RUSH what fuckan theory    a book on theory  i wrote  n publishd in 72 wch is now being refreshd n reissewd by  book thug  in toronto    my second novel   hungree throat   will b out in spring 13   n what ium reelee working on now  is my nu  book  mostlee   dewing a lot uv lettr texting in it

yu can find a wide range uv my work in you tube  n also my web site  th offishul bill bissett web site www.billbissett.com

oh thr ar mor thn a few cds out uv my work  chek th cv in th website   th most recent cd  is   nothing will hurt   with pete dako  xtraordinaree musician   n arrangr  n composr  n gary shenkman  n ambrose pottie

cest sa   i gess thats all 4 now  thanks sew much 4 yr interest  thees intrviews ar kinduv hard 2 dew sumtimes  a prson dusint want 2 bcum 2 self conscious  but they reelee help me as well   thanks veree much

hungree throat veree recentlee compleetid out spring 2013                                
hungree throat is a novel in meditaysyun   2 peopul getting 2gethr  wun afrayd uv continuing intimasee bcoz uv what has happend 2 him  th othr not bewilderd n anxious  is eagr 4 nu xperiences with his nu partnr   th meditaysyun is partlee abt letting go   how hard that is  n sumtimez how seminglee eezee  th struggul letting go can b owing 2 th obsessing  paralyzing n shaping burdns uv our pasts  th obstakuls that trauma creates 4 our presents n futurs   layrs n layrs   ficksyuns n realiteez  wch  ar   peopuls throats ar hungree 4 breething   4 speeking  digesting  saying   singing eeting  tasting  giving kissing  sew much uv th worlds throats ar hungree not onlee 4 evreething  also 4 food   watr  air    wun uv th last stages b4 passing uv peopul with parkinsons is whn th throat no longr swallows  millyuns uv peopul with sleep apnea sleep with masheens pushing air in2 theyr throats all nite long 2 prevent closure    th throat chakra being well is a condishyun uv our life  th throat is hungree also 4 acceptans uv what is  n what has bin  n what is beleevablee possibul  thru song  sound poetree  narrativ  n non narrativ analysis  meditaysun  words n meenings oftn dissolving    hungree throat  looks at all thees dynamiks  2 share  greev  celebrate  uplift    love   n moov 4words  play with  th word  growing  its parts  sylabuls  n th mouth n throat shaping   each in our times  gr  ow  wo ing  wing s

bill bissett's MOST RECENT BOOK
hungree throat by bill bissett, Talonbooks, 2013

Description from the Publisher:
Written in his non-hierarchic, phonetic orthography, bill bissett’s second novel-poem, hungree throat, recounts the relationship of two men – one bold and unafraid, the other burdened by terrible memories and unable to trust. In this uplifting “novel in meditaysyun” about love, in which we witness ten years of a shared life, we are reminded of the overlapping, sometimes conflicting multitude of “hungers” common to us all:




all our throats
r hungree 4 breething being sing
ing eeting digesting speeking
saying food kissing watr love
air ficksyun fakt memoree
th present what is nu all ovr
lapping imbuing change
th throat chakra being well
is a condishyn 4 life

Nadia Litz is an award-winning Canadian actress and director. After her debut at Cannes in the award-winning film The Five Senses, Maclean’s magazine voted her “One to Watch” for the new millennium. She played Sam Shepard’s daughter in 2002’s After The Harvest and was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Actress for that role. In 2007 she won the Vancouver’s Critics Award for her role in Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare.  Her 2010 short film, How To Rid Your Lover Of A Negative Emotion Caused By You!,  produced by the Canadian Film Centre where she was a director-in- residence, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010, has played over a dozen film festivals throughout the US, Canadian and internationally, including out-of-competition at the Cannes Court Metrage, winning best short at Austin’s Fantastic Fest 2011. In 2012 Litz was featured on the prestigious Wholphin anthology, alongside Jay Duplass (Jeff Who Lives At Home) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Recently Litz completed an experimental short doc on Canada’s revered and controversial Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson, which makes its world premiere at VIFF in September 2012. Her first feature Hotel Congress, a comedy-of manners that takes place in a Tucson hotel is in post-production. While her second feature, a love story that takes place in a suicide forest in Japan, goes to camera in 2013. You can follow her on Twitter.

RUSTY TALK WITH NADIA LITZ

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Nadia Litz: In grade school we had to choose a story of a historical figure, do research on the figure, and then make a book on that figure. We had to write it, illustrate it, and even bind the book ourselves. My dad had taken me to go and see Milos Forman's Amadeus and I became obsessed with it and subsequently Mozart, so I chose to write my "book" on him. I called it "Wolfie".

KM: When did you first start directing and writing for film?
NL: I tend to do a lot of "research" before I try something. I read screenwriting books and had taken classes, and I had been aimlessly writing pretend scripts and treatments for a while—maybe 10 years. But, it wasn't until my last year of university studying Cinema Studies that I directed. It was a 3-minute experimental short that was an assignment in a directing for non-majors class. It landed me a spot as a director-in-residence at the Canadian Film Center months later. That was in 2009. Which proves I'm a noobie and you should probably stop reading this.

KM: How do you think your acting background influences or affects your directing and writing?
NL: I think it does but it is hard to articulate how. I suppose I trust what good actors can bring to a moment, so when I was first writing, I tended to underwrite (according to producers and story editors). I continue to learn the balance of what should be on the page and what shouldn't be. I was just re-reading Allan Ball's American Beauty, and in the script he writes a stage direction for the character Carolyn: "Even when she slept she had a look of determination on her face."  That kind of writing is gold for an actor. As an actor if I read that one line, I would understand the character, so I try to be mindful of things like that when I write and when I direct. The script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is also full of stage direction like that. Simple editorial clues that will be an anchor for an actor, without force feeding it. I don't mind breaking what might be considered screenwriting convention in order to make a script come alive for an actor; however, I do believe in a firm structure as a base.

KM: What inspires the stories you tell?
NL: I have noticed that locations seem to inspire the first grain of an idea for me. However, I hope that whatever inspires me at a given time will evolve as I do as a writer. I think the first few stories we tell tend to have a personal element. Filmmakers can seem like we want our trajectory to be the indie personal story root because when we are first starting out, we have budgetary constraints that lend themselves to personal stories. I love including personal elements in my stories, little nods to my life, but I have yet to ever want to tell the truth about my life on film. My preference is to look around me. I also like emotionalizing things that are "concepts". Also, I get a bunch of ideas via the Sunday Times. Too many, really, it's shameful.

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
NL: Kurt Vonnegut was the first great literary writer I read as a teenager. He had those naive drawings in a few of his novels, which always seemed subversive to high art literature and cinematic to me for some reason. His voice resonates with me still. He is wry and detached but wholly emotional to me. His satire is never mean. He points out the meanness of the world because his heart is broken that it is like that. That's how I see him. I relate to that way of thinking. His voice/tone is highly original.

The list is too long for filmmakers. However most of the films I love tend to be some form of comedy-of-manners in a broad stroke way. I think a lot of Kubrick's films, for example, are comedy-of-manners so I have a broad idea about that genre. Bunuel, Oshima, Ozu, Rhomer, Kubrick, Cohen Brothers, Whit Stillman, Coppola (Sofia)—usual suspects.

KM: When you are directing films that you didn't write—what is the process like? Do you have any advice about what screenwriters can expect when working with a director?
NL: I love the process of directing others' work. It's a whole other ballgame then directing your own work, and both are equally satisfying for different reasons. In directing another screenwriter's script you have to find clever ways of making it meaningful to you. It's a challenge to have one more person you need to satisfy. It can be exciting that your only way to tell the story is visually/emotionally. With the short “How To Rid Your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused By You!” it was a case of having two very strong voices in the mix—the writer Ryan Cavan and mine as a director. It's successful because both visions were honored. 

KM: When writing your own scripts what is the writing process like for you? How do you approach revision?
NL: I love to write. It is a joy. I don't feel bogged down by it. If I hit a block, it's a challenge and I like challenge. The thing that gets me down is when I lose interest in something that I have been working on for some time. Do you try to revive the interest or do you let it go? That's an obstacle for sure. For revisions I like to have a plan. I'll start with strengthening the peripheral characters and work my way towards the protagonist. I just read these great tips from James Schamus, who had some harebrained ideas for revisions I think I might try. Revisions are a drag, but he had these thoughts about standing a draft on its head that seemed very smart.

KM: When getting notes from producers—what do you do when you get a note that you don't like or agree with on your script?
NL: Only take good ideas and only from people you respect. You know your script and characters better than anyone. People will try to convince to take their note by saying things like "you're too close to the script". I say, "yes!" It is a good thing to be very close to your script. Also, when you are starting out people will tell you are suppose to consider all producer notes, because you are new. Like it is a manners thing. This is what I think: your script is the thing you are the expert on. Have the conversation, if only as a way to articulate why you don't agree with their note, but ultimately you make the choice. You are the CEO of your script and a CEO needs to believe in the company and lead it. No one calls a CEO 'precious' when they believe in their company, so don't let words like that deter you...Now, if you're a bad CEO, your company will fail and the public will let you know quite quickly and you won't be allowed to be CEO anymore! So, you have to be a good CEO! But, ultimately I'm all for screenwriters, respectfully, standing up for a choice. Most producers in the real world respect people who can articulate and communicate a vision. It is your responsibility to instill trust in your producers and funders about that choice, however. Also, that was a really long CEO metaphor. I hope it was clear...Also, if you are a gun-for-hire, it's a totally different thing. Then you apply the note and you find your way into the note. Case closed.

KM: What are you working on now?
NL: I just finished shooting my first feature called Hotel Congress.  I had been in development on what was suppose to be my first feature The People Garden when this opportunity to make a film for no money presented itself. Hotel Congress is a film full of things I swore I would never do. I wrote it in 12 days. Very little revisions. Very talky. We shot the film in 40 hours. I star in it. I co-produced it. I co-directed it with Michel Kandinsky. Did I mention we shot the entire feature in 40 hours? We shot it on location in Tucson Arizona in a hotel called Hotel Congress. It is a romantic comedy-of-manners that we shot in 40 hours. We're in the edit now. We don't know if we're crazy, but so far we love it and think it's quite charming, actually. It was made with so much drive and love by an insular team of my favorite co-horts. It would be impossible not to love a feature film. That you shot. In forty hours. In the desert. 

I hope to make my film The People Garden next year. With a smidge more time.

Nadia Litz and Michel Kandinsky – Directors’ Statement

“Instead of bashfully wearing its microscopic budget as a badge of honor, Nadia Litz and Michel Kandinsky’s HOTEL CONGRESS aims for a genuine economy of craft. Ironically, in a project devised and executed in the shadows of the Canadian production stream, it’s a combination of old fashion virtues – a resonant location, clever camera placement, and a worthily wordy screenplay – that elevates Litz and Kandinsky’s first feature debut beyond a novelty item.” –Adam Nayman (Cinema Scope, The Grid)

Hotel Congress is a tender comedy-of-manners about two people who meet in a hotel famous for its nefarious associations to Depression era bank robber John Dillinger. Sofia and Francis try not to have an affair, while trying to find true love. The film comically deals with ethics in an unethical situation and could aptly be re-titled “What Happens When Cynics Try To Care.” Or “Why John Dillinger is Not A Bad Guy.”

The film was Shot for a $1000, in under 40 hours at the historic Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. Litz had been to the hotel 7 years prior to see the post-punk band Interpol play a show in the parking lot. She was struck by the dichotomous feeling of isolation and warmth the hotel had. The way the hotel felt stuck in time.

Nadia Litz (writer, co-director, co-producer, actress):

This film was under ‘willing duress’ from the start. I say willing because we wanted to prove a point in this very competitive market: you just need some smarts and an air tight work ethic to make an interesting film. Film at its best is about ideas and relatable emotion. Let that be the end of budget and time constraints.

When you start to think of what you can do for $1000, you quickly realize the script can save you. In writing this particular project, I focused on films that we all deeply admired the dialogue of (because dialogue doesn’t need lighting!) and why those films work. Obviously we love Mamet and Woody Allen and Hal Hartley and of recent years Lena Dunham comes to mind. We were going through a major Sturges period – hence the 4:3 - his films are simply shot, but beautifully romantic yet not at all ‘twee’….But, Whit Stillman is still the quintessential dialogue screenwriter for me. His characters are satirical, but his films are tender in a way that sneaks up on you. Could the Chris Eigeman character be more of a jerk, that you ultimately feel for, because a) he is truly stuck in his own jerk-ness and b)he’s the least hypocritical character in the Stillman world. I had him in mind for my character Sofia.

Stillman’s ideas and his modern philosophy (or philosophy of modernity) are what you care about in his films. Ideas and philosophies don’t inherently cost money so they bode well for indie filmmaking. That seemed like the highest bar to work towards.

I’m not into improvisation, shooting everything and finding the film in the edit for indie filmmaking. I think you need to be more meticulous and disciplined in the basics of the craft as an indie filmmaker

I wrote the film round the clock in twelve days. We were shooting three weeks later. Every word we said is in the original script. It felt mischievous to do it that way, to not belabor the process with second-guessing and rewrites. Just write it and shoot it.

When you don’t try to fit into a preconceived mold, the mode of storytelling becomes more interesting. You feel uncensored.

Michel Kandinsky: (co-director, co-producer)

For me, the film is about two people trapped by their own erudite, iconoclast self-awareness. They know what to say at the appropriate moment and how to say it in a clever way but this knowledge keeps them from feeling as deeply as they could.

I approach film as an intuitive medium, one in which too much thought gets in the way when time on set is spent trusting your intuition. It’s the opposite of what the characters in the film are doing, until they do it…And then once they trust in it they become the kind of love they aspire to, without even realizing it.

This was the first time I had co-directed anything. The remarkably short amount of time that we had to shoot this film kept us from too much discussion once we were on set. We simply didn’t have the ability to talk things out once we started shooting. We had to trust the script and our base instincts, keep out the temptation to over-think. I think that comes through in the finished product. There’s an energy there that I find very empowering. We knew we had to just start.

Starring
Nadia Litz
Philip Riccio

Director
Nadia Litz
Michel Kandinsky

Writer
Nadia Litz

Producer
Nadia Litz
Michel Kandinsky
Philip Riccio
&
Daniel Bekerman

Exec Producer
Ingrid Veninger
Stacey Donen

Cinematographer
Daniel Grant

Editor
Jonathan Eagan

Sound Editing
Gabe Knox

Song by
Paul Banks

Directed By: Nadia Litz
Starring: Sarah Allen & Joe Cobden
Screenplay By: Ryan Cavan
Produced By: Heather K. Dahlstrom & Daniel Bekerman
Edited By: Alexandre-Nicholas Giffard
Director of Photography: Daniel Grant
Production Design By: Nazgol Goshtasbpour

Description
Love can make us do weird things. Sadie does a weird thing. She does it to her boyfriend Dennis. Keep in mind she only wants what's best for both of them—a perfect relationship. It could be the perfect relationship, too, as long as nobody bleeds to death.

Sachiko Murakami is the author of the poetry collections The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks, 2008), a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and Rebuild (Talonbooks, 2011). She has been a literary worker for numerous presses, journals, and organizations, and is Poetry Editor for Insomniac Press. She is the initiator of the online collaborative poetry projects Project Rebuild and PowellStreetHenko.ca. She lives in Toronto.

RUSTY TALK WITH SACHIKO MURAKAMI

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Sachiko Murakami: I would write fake diary entries about what me and my friends did after school. I would write these after school alone in my room (often hiding behind a piece of furniture), as I had no friends.
 
KM: Why did you become a poet?
SM: Um. See: friendless and hiding behind furniture, above. Clearly I was not going to be a professional soccer player.
 
KM: Could you describe your writing process? (For example, do you write every day? When? Where? How do you approach revision, etc.)
SM:

Step 1: Find something that hooks a thought into a line. Most often I find this happens while walking in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, reading a poem, waking in the middle of the night, etc.

Step 2: Scribble line down (usually on a smudgy receipt, as I am rather bad at keeping notebooks on hand).

Step 3: Bring line to page.

Step 4: Keep going.

Step 5: Revision is an evolutionary process. I wrestle around with the poem for a while, take a break, return, repeat. Then I bring the poem to someone else and watch as they politely break its beautiful legs. Then I begin again.

KM: Rejection or criticism can often stop writers before they start. Do you have any advice on how to deal with rejection?
SM: Stay open! Prepare yourself for the gifts criticism and rejection are going to give you: resilience, yes, but also a curiosity about your work, and better writing. Invite in editors who will politely break your poem's limbs (the key word being politely). Take a workshop. Start a writing group. Get used to criticism, and use criticism. Listen to the questions that are being asked of your poems. Take the serious questions seriously.

Rejection from publishers and literary journals is, for the most part, a numbers game. When I read for literary magazines, there would be a hundred poems submitted for every one page available.

If publication is your goal, then try your best to write publishable material. If writing is your goal, then keep writing.

KM: You used to co-host the Pivot Readings at The Press Club in Toronto. Do you have any advice or tips for new writers about performing their work in front of audience?
SM:

Don't: pre-explain your poems, get drunk beforehand, or go over your allotted time.

Do: Talk to your audience. Look at them. Invite them in to your poems. Go under time. Then thank your hosts and the bar.

KM: From your perspectives as an editor and poet, how would you describe the writer/editor relationship? What should a new writer expect once his or her manuscript is accepted by a publisher?
SM: See above re: breaking of limbs, asking serious questions. As an editor, I think I develop a stronger relationship with the manuscript than with the writer.

In terms of the publishing process, a first-book author can expect to develop the quality of patience. A manuscript passes through many busy hands before it becomes a book.

KM: Can you tell us about your collaborative poetry projects? What got you interested in collaborative poetry? What has the response been?
SM: ProjectRebuild.ca began when I invited some poets into a poem about a Vancouver Special (a type of house in Vancouver). I was interested in seeing how they would interpret my invitation to renovate it as they saw fit. I then had a friend, Starkaður Barkarson, create a website in which any of the poems can be "moved into" and "renovated". There has been a tremendous response to this project—over 200 poems on the site from contributors across the world. The source poem, "Vancouver Special", resides in my second collection, Rebuild.

PowellStreetHenko.ca is an online renga commissioned by the 2012 Powell Street Festival. A renga is a collaborative Japanese form in which each stanza is written by a new person. This renga expands outwards, as you can respond to every stanza in the poem (not just the last one written, as in a traditional renga). Powell Street Festival is a Japanese-Canadian festival held in Vancouver. They asked me to create something like Project Rebuild for them, and this is what I came up with (along with Starkaður). I travelled to Vancouver this summer to launch the project at the festival, and since then the poem has slowly grown as people reflect on change ("henko"), the theme of the poem.

Why do this? I like the idea of putting writing out there that can be taken and messed around with and misinterpreted and reused and repurposed. I like the discomfort it brings. I like prying my writing from my ego's fist. I like conversations.

KM: What is your funniest or favourite literary moment that you've experienced.
SM: Jacob McArthur Mooney leaving the stage during his reading at Pivot to buy the audience cotton candy from the street vendor passing by on Dundas. No wonder he's the new host.
 
KM: What are you working on now?
SM: Poems about airports/the struggle to stay present. A novel about fake orphans.

The Invisibility Exhibit, Talonbooks, 2008
Description from the publisher:

These poems were written in the political and emotional wake of the “Missing Women” of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Although women had been going missing from the neighbourhood since the late 1970s, police efforts were not coordinated into a full-scale investigation until the issue was given widespread public visibility by Lori Culbert, Lindsay Kines and Kim Bolan’s 2001 “Missing Women” series in the Vancouver Sun. This media coverage, combined with the efforts of activists in political and cultural sectors, finally resulted in increased official investigative efforts, which have so far led to the arrest of Robert Pickton, on whose property the remains of twenty-seven of the sixty-eight listed women were found. In December 2007, Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in what had become one the highest-profile criminal cases to take place in B.C.’s history; yet this is not the focus of this book.

As the title suggests, the concern of this project is an investigation of the troubled relationship between this specific marginalized neighbourhood, its “invisible” populations both past and present, and the wealthy, healthy city that surrounds it. These poems interrogate the comfortable distance from which the public consumes the sensationalist news story by turning their focus toward the normative audience, the equally invisible public. In the speaker’s examination of this subject, assumptions and delineations of community, identity and ultimately citizenship are called into question. Projects such as Lincoln Clarkes’ controversial Heroines photographic series and subsequent book (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2002), news stories, and even the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games circulate intertextually in this manuscript, while Pickton’s trial is intentionally absent.

Irritated by complacency, troubled by determinate narrative and the relationship between struggle and the artistic representation of struggle, Murakami is a poet bewildered by her city’s indifference to the neglect of its inhabitants.

Iain MacLeod is a film and TV writer from Nova Scotia.  Educated at York University and the Canadian Film Centre, where he was captain of the soccer team, Iain’s first TV gig was writing sketch on CBC’s Street Cents.  Later he spent six seasons on Showcase’s Trailer Park Boys as story editor and the last four of those as one of the writers too.  Since then he has consulted on various shows in development, done some teaching and mentoring and also spent a lot of time thinking about joining the Navy.  Most recently his co-written feature comedy Beat Down was produced and will be released in theatres this fall.

RUSTY TALK WITH IAIN MACLEOD

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Iain MacLeod: I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, and I can remember playing in the woods a lot and pretending to be a soldier in WW2. I’d make up characters and little story lines. In terms of actual writing-it-down-writing though, I guess that would be writing stories in elementary school. A teacher said to me once I could be a writer. Foolishly I listened to her.  

KM: When did you first start writing for film/TV?
IM: As far back as grade twelve I’d fooled around with video but nothing serious.  Then when I finished university I somehow convinced my Mum to loan me a lot of money to make a 48-minute film. That was in 1996 and afterwards I made a few more shorts before getting a job at CBC’s Street Cents in 1999.     

KM: What inspires the stories you tell?
IM: I think it’s a combination of my neurotic brain and the weird area I grew up, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, which is literally the worst town in Canada (seriously there’s a list and it’s finished last, two years in a row…don’t get too cocky though Toronto you were 47 this year). There’s always something strange going on there and I just love that. So my inspiration is crazy people, myself included?  Does that make me bad? It might. I just love people and the nonsense they get up to. Worst species ever…but I love us.

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
IM: All kinds really though I’m not quite sure how each person did. My favourite writer for example is Jane Austen (who is the greatest writer in the history of the English-language and I will fist-fight anybody who disagrees) but I don’t think anyone would see her influence in my writing. Should I just say Quentin Tarantino?    

KM: What is the writing process like for you when working on your own projects?
IM: I love to write but I also hate it…a lot. It isn’t always that much fun and (I hope) like a lot of writers I avoid it as much as possible. If I’m writing a script there’s usually a long drawn out period of making notes, thinking about structure, and so on. Then there’s an outline and that should be followed by a treatment but often isn’t. Finally, I write the script and that can actually happen fairly quickly if I get on a roll. I find a lot of the process is about waiting, staring at the ceiling, searching Wikipedia etc. Not fun.     

KM: How do you approach revision?
IM: With terror. To be fair sometimes it’s not that bad and can even be fun, but I also often feel like “that’s it, I’m done, it’s perfect” when I finish a first draft. And by often I mean always. You have to revise though. I guess?

KM: What was the co-writing process like on your feature film Beat Down?
IM: My co-writer, Deanne Foley, and I have a very similar sensibility (I don’t know if we’re really funny or not but we find each other hilarious) so for the most part the writing went smoothly. It can be a bit complicated to distribute scenes, acts etc. fairly between two people, but there was a lot of talking things through and knowing where we were going first. It ended up taking 2-3 years in the end, and I think that was both a good thing and a bad thing. On the whole though, it was a great experience. I’ve done co-writing where it’s been wonderful and where it’s been an absolute unbearable hell. Writing Beat Down was the former.

KM: What is the biggest difference between writing for film and writing for TV?
IM: Other than the paycheque you mean? I guess it’s that a movie ends but you have to keep coming up with new stories for a TV show. That sounds obvious but it is a really hard thing to do (watch The Beachcombers Season 15 for example).  Not all show concepts can sustain that. When I pitch TV series I often hear “that’s a movie” so I guess I haven’t really mastered it myself. Another thing is that, at least in Canada, there are far more people weighing in with notes for TV than with film and not always in a good way. 

KM: When getting notes from producers or story editors, what do you do when you get a note that you don’t like or agree with on your script?
IM: I smile and think they’re idiots. That’s actually true. But then if the note’s any good or I respect the person giving it I do seriously consider it, which is something I never used to do when I was younger. Maybe I’m growing up. Ultimately, if you’re getting paid and these are the people who will, hopefully, get your thing made you have to listen. It’s a balancing act though, fighting for your vision on the one hand and hearing different views on the other. It takes a long time to figure that out and given the nature of this business I don’t know that anyone ever does completely. As a general rule though, if you’re getting the same note from different people they’re probably right. Idiots!

KM: Do you have any advice for someone aspiring to write for television?  What is the best way to break in?
IM: I don’t have children but whenever I’m asked this question I feel like that’s what it would be like if I did and they asked me about Santa Claus. I genuinely want to be encouraging, but at the same time the simple truth, which is rarely stated unfortunately, is that writing for TV is highly, even brutally, competitive.  And not only is it competitive, but also there isn’t a prescribed path to take to break in. It’s not like being a doctor or a welder or a taxi driver or whatever, where as long as you do certain things it will happen. TV is just so unpredictable.  One of the things that’s hurt me (and it is possible I just suck too) is it took me a long time to get my head around that. I was trying to apply my small-town Presbyterian worldview to the industry and it wasn’t adding up. Anyway by all means immerse yourself in TV, try to write a brilliant spec script, talk to as many people as you can who are already in the business and so on but my biggest piece of advice is simply, understand just how unpredictable and ridiculous this business is. It’s probably going to be hard no matter what, but if you don’t have that perspective I’m talking about, it will be much harder. And you’ll probably go completely insane (that isn’t a joke). Of course everything I just said only applies to people who aren’t scumbags. For those of you who are, my advice is much simpler, just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll go far. I’m totally serious by the way—they have a much better shot. Lucky bastards. 

KM: What is your favourite moment that you’ve experienced as a writer or filmmaker?
IM: I was in a bar in my hometown once talking with some people a buddy of mine knew. They asked me what I did and I told them and one of them quoted his favourite Trailer Park Boys line, a line I’d written. So that’s probably the best moment. Not quite saving the world but I’ll take it.  

KM: What are you working on now?
IM: I have a couple features in development. One of my own, called Soccer Punch, and another with co-writer Ed McNamara, Brobots.  I have a few more in pre-development (which is code for I’m not getting paid), and I have some TV pitches I’m working on too.  I’m also fooling around with a novel fragment that I wrote when I was in my mid-20s and finally decided to work on again. It’s called Leftovers and is about my hometown (I’m also toying with calling it The Worst Town In Canada).