“I’m a little wild on the page”: Interview with Author Alexandra Leggat (Part 1)

I’m excited that Alexandra will be taking part as guest speaker in my Turquoise Waters Writers’ Retreat in the Kawartha Lakes, July 29 to August 2, and further, that she has a new book coming out this fall. The following is Part 1 of my two-part interview with her about her writing.

 

 

 

 

 

ALEXANDRA LEGGAT is the author of the short story collections Animal (Anvil Press, 2009), which was shortlisted for the 23rd Annual Trillium Book Award, Meet Me in the Parking Lot (Insomniac Press 2004), Pull Gently, Tear Here (Insomniac Press, 2001), which was nominated for the Danuta Gleed First Fiction Award, and a collection of poetry entitled This is me since yesterday (Coach House Books, 2000). Her articles and reviews have appeared in Toro, The Globe and Mail, and Niagara Life magazine, and her poetry and fiction has been published in journals across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. She teaches creative writing classes at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Visit her at http://alexandraleggat.blogspot.ca.

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Alexandra, I know you wrote poetry from an early age. Can you tell me about that, and whether you see its role in your life as different from that of fiction?

I wrote poetry naturally as a child. I never consciously thought about doing it, I just did it. Kind of like breathing and seeing — it was natural. Poetry was my outlet, my ultimate realm of expression. I was painfully shy and reserved, and poetry was the vehicle through which I could exercise my thoughts, questions, conundrums, pain, and happiness. Poetry is still instrumental to my work. It’s the constant melody or soundtrack, if you will, that hums beneath and in between my fiction. It is the undercurrent in my day-to-day writing realm. Though I rarely write in the poetic form, poeticism is ever-present in my fiction, in imagery, rhythm, simile, metaphor, and economy of words.

How did you move from poetry to fiction?

Unconsciously. One day my hand kept going to the end of the page and punctuation crept in. Suddenly I had more to say. I guess as my life has gotten longer, so has my style of work.

Your first book, Pull Gently, Tear Here (Insomniac Press, 2001), was nominated for the Danuta Gleed First Fiction Award. In what ways have you seen your writing change or evolve since then?

My characters have names, the work is longer, more in-depth, more of a blending of concrete detail and exposition with the abstract. The tone, pace, themes, and subject matter have matured. Each book I’ve written has represented a stage of my life. This is me since yesterday represented birth to twenty; Pull Gently, Tear Here – my twenties; Meet Me in The Parking Lot, my thirties; Animal, my early forties, and now The Incomparables, the novel, encompasses birth to and including my forties!

How do you gather ideas? Do you keep a notebook?

Ideas are constantly swimming in my head. When things hit me I do write them down: images, dreams, titles, passages. I write every day in one capacity or another and I’m writing in my head constantly. I am never at a loss for ideas. I have an active imagination and I’m an avid reader, observer, listener, and an empath. So my radar is always picking up on and feeling things I want to explore, express, and discover. I have another novel finished and ready to be published next fall and I’ve started a new book already and have the title for the one following that. I’m in an extremely productive and creative stage of my life — I’m thrilled to say — considering it has also been an extremely difficult stage of my adult “real” life.

In what way does facing a difficult stage in your real life influence your writing process, or the results? Does it fuel your writing differently from easier, happier stages?

The process and the result for me are unpredictable. Happy, sad, easy or hard times, I need to write. The latest book is fuelled by loss. My brother passed away almost 2 years ago and the pain continues to be unbearable and writing is what gets me through. That and screaming very loud in rain storms! The other difficult changes I am experiencing are fuelling my creativity because I am evolving because of it, and as difficult and painful as it is, there is great happiness awaiting on the other side and that too makes me want to write more. I’ll write my way to that happiness. So I think my creativity flourishes in good and bad times as long as I have the freedom and space to create. If I don’t have that, I can’t write — and if I can’t write I feel like I am lifeless. I’m dead.

Have you observed any patterns in the sources of inspiration for your books, or has each been unique?

If there are I’m not conscious of them . Every book has been different for me, and each one I begin feels like I’ve never written a book before — each book presents new things and takes on a new process. A lot of my work begins with a title, or a tone of voice, or an image, and is a reflection of a stage in my life. Pull Gently, Tear Here began when I was a waitress and bartender in the Beaches [area of Toronto], and one night I was in the toilet at a pub called Captain Jack’s and I looked at the toilet paper dispenser and it said “Pull gently, tear here,” and I said, That’s it — the title of my next book, and the next day I started writing it.

Meet Me in the Parking Lot was inspired by a feature article I wrote on investigative reporter Yves Lavigne, who wrote about infiltrating the Hells Angels. After reading his books and hanging around with and becoming friends with Yves, his stories and the life he had to lead affected my psyche. I slept with the light on for months, and every time I heard a motorcycle, I thought, What the hell did I get myself into. The writing of the stories in that book took me to strange places in my mind. The caverns, I called them, places I hope I never get taken back to again. It is my most fictional book and more stylistic. I went over that book with a scalpel.

Animal is one of the first books I’ve written where it began with theme. I was conscious of what I wanted to express, elements of being a woman, a wife, childless, aging. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to express each theme until I put pen to paper. It is extremely autobiographical. A lot of my stories begin from dreams and do incorporate my actual dreams. I write stream of consciousness for the most part, and discover what I’m actually writing about as I progress. I learn from my work. It’s that mysterious element I love, and solving the riddles, the puzzles, as I go deeper into a piece of work.

So you often fictionalize real experiences you’ve had or people you’ve known?

All the time! I marry reality and fiction in one way or another. Although, this new book The Incomparables came to me while stopped at a traffic light one day. The fiction came first with this one. I had no clue who the characters wandering across my mind were, and it took me a couple of years to figure out what the heck it was all about, and its relation to my experiences. What I discovered was I was writing about something that had yet to happen, so the reality occurred and who the real people were behind the characters came to me while I continued to write and peel away the layers of the onion. So I guess this one came from premonition, or some kind of weird prophecy-type process — a real experience that was unfolding as I wrote.

You’re also a singer-songwriter. When you want to express something, how do you decide what form is best: poetry, song, fiction, or essay? Or does finding the right form involve experimentation?

I think it depends, and happens instinctively. Deep down I would have loved to be a rock star! Songs are an extension of poetry for me, and I’m a huge music fan. I worked in record stores when I was young and used to host a music show on TV when I lived in London.

Essays come with tone. I know by the rhythm and tone of something, the voice, whether it will be an essay, creative nonfiction, fiction, or a song. But I always have music in my head. The times the music has stopped, I really worried! I hum, tap my foot, and listen to music as I write, no matter what I’m writing. Songs come from melody. If I’m singing or humming something out loud, I just go straight to the guitar and start putting the chords down with the words, or hum away until the words come.

I paint too, which I love because as with music I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and there is so much freedom in that. I paint abstract art on glass —  so the image comes out the opposite when you turn the glass around. I’m a little upside down and backwards myself, so painting on glass feels very natural to me, and again the element of surprise is there because I have no idea how something is going to look the other way around. I love discovering the story in the art, the accidental images and the faces or ghosts that appear through the paint, the shapes, and shadows. So writing with paint, and shapes and shadows, and colors and texture, is very exciting to me — and it is very similar to poetry in that whatever it means to you, not me, is what matters.

Do you develop a structure before you begin, or write and see where it takes you?

Definitely not a structure girl — in any aspect of my life! I’m totally from the Ray Bradbury school of writing, “jump off the cliff and learn to fly on the way down” — or up if you’re lucky! I write from my gut, the voices in my head, the images. I’m not in the driver seat until I’m in revision stages and have figured out what the hell something is about. Then I get technical and structure what I have. I need content first, the energy and blood and guts of first thoughts, then I fit the batter into the right baking pan. I’m a little wild on the page. I want to be taken away. That’s why I write — to be taken away. I write what wants to be written.

(Read Part 2 of this interview.)

 

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