The Art of the Novel: Interview with Amanda Hale

By Bianca Lakoseljac: OB Writer in Residence

I have been fortunate to work with Amanda Hale at various writers’ events. In April, at Authors for Indies, we volunteered as book-sellers at Another Story Bookstore. Earlier this month, at the Toronto Heliconian Club, we read from our works. Amanda read from her upcoming novel, Mad Hatter, and her witty and engaging storytelling voice kept the audience beaming throughout her read.

Amanda’s novel, My Sweet Curiosity has been described as “flowing seamlessly from one time period to another while providing interesting insight into how the physical body is connected to emotions and spirituality.”  

Amanda Hale is the author of three acclaimed novels, two poetry chapbooks, and a collection of short fictions set in Cuba. She has been published in literary magazines in Canada and the US, winning the Prism International prize for creative non-fiction in 2008. She is currently collaborating as librettist on a new opera – Pomegranate.   www.amandahale.com

I am pleased to welcome Amanda to my Art of the Novel Interview series.

1.      Bianca Lakoseljac: Of the novels you wrote or are working on, do you have a favourite—one you consider your most important work?

Amanda Hale:Sounding the Blood was my first novel and, although I don’t have a ‘favorite,’ each novel being totally engaging in its time, Soundinghas so far had the most success. I published it with Raincoast Books in Vancouver and it was a finalist for the BC Relit awards, and was immediately optioned as a feature film upon publication. The film did not materialize but that option did lead to me adapting the book as a screenplay myself, because I love film, and because many of my readers found it intensely visual and remembered their reading as a scenic experience.

Sounding was also successful academically, making it onto five university reading lists, in Canada, the US, and Czech Republic. It has recently been translated into Spanish and will be presented at the Havana Book Fair in February 2017.

This novel was special to me also because it kind of crept up on me. I had not intended to write a novel. I visited Rose Harbour on Haida Gwaii in British Columbia where my friend Susan lives on the site of an old whaling station. It is a haunted place, filled with the voices of the early Japanese and Chinese immigrants who worked there under brutal and isolated conditions. I began writing what I thought to be a journal and eventually realized that I had a novel on my hands, almost channeled from the voices of those ghosts. The novel communicates above all the power of place.

2.      BL:  Which of your novels was the most challenging to write?

AH:The Reddening Path and My Sweet Curiosity were the most challenging because these two novels were originally one. Imagine juggling two major plots each with its own subplot – one set in Renaissance Europe and one in Mexico and Latin America during the conquest -  and you get the idea of how unwieldy and crazy-making my experience was! My editor called me and said, “I have a suggestion. Are you sitting down?” Then she told me that I had not one but two novels. They had to be separated, like Siamese twins, but in fact the surgery was quite easy even though my editor’s suggestion had seemed to me wildly radical. Once I began to work on the novels separately I realized how overly ambitious I had been and how unnecessarily painful the process as a result. Too much complexity can strangle a story. In fact, after separation, I had two thoroughly engaging novels which each found their own audience and success, My Sweet Curiositybeing long-listed for the ReLit fiction award, The Reddening Path going very quickly to a second printing, and both novels being translated into Spanish.

3.      BL: Do you work from an outline?

AH: I do not work from an outline because I like my writing to be a process of discovery. I need to remain as open as possible and to follow my instincts to the completion of a first draft. Only then can I go back, read what I’ve written and assess the unfolding of the story. Once I know what I’m dealing with I can begin to edit and order the sequence of events and start building some kind of outline. It is a process of analysis rather than of planning. How can you outline something not yet discovered? For me writing is an exploration into a mysterious and unknown landscape. The story has something to tell me, and I do not want to lose that by trying to control it.

4.      BL:  Are you part of a critiquing group?

AH: Yes, I am a member of a Writers’ Group and for the most part I find it useful and supportive. We have been together three years and have grown to trust and value each other’s critical abilities. When I take a piece of writing to the group I expect an honest critique which, though it might be temporarily unsettling, invariably ends up benefiting me and the writing. We take risks with each other. We feel vulnerable. It is always risky to expose unfinished work. But with the care and sensitivity that such a group requires we manage to nurture each other’s writing in a genuine and unselfish manner.

5.      BL:   What advice would you offer to an aspiring writer?

AH: Take yourself seriously. Be disciplined. Write every day. Writing is not a hobby. It requires passionate and determined engagement. Don’t wait for ‘inspiration.’ Writing is hard work but its reward is the gift of self-expression, true communication. There are many clichés about writing and most of them are true. 80% of the work is indeed in the editing. Write your first draft powered by passion and then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and then do some more rewriting until all that’s left to do is the fine-tuning of the very final editing.

I have for many years been leading writing workshops entitled “Writing from the Body.” We do a series of writing exercises, we have rules, we time everything and we write by hand and never let the pen stop moving. We tell our inner critic to take a break and we give ourselves permission to write the worst stuff, trusting that in amongst the spontaneous welter of words will be a few gems to be garnered. Writing can be a messy business, like birth, lots of blood and shit, but oh the joy when that perfect creation emerges squalling its lungs out!

6.      BL:  Is there a single most important thing a writer should do before starting a new novel?

AH: Before embarking on a novel do your research. Immerse yourself, read everything you can on the topic. If there are similar books read them so you don’t repeat someone else’s work. Go to the place where your novel is set, walk there, explore, get your senses attuned to the sights, smells, the feel of the place. Jot down your ideas during this process, along with snatches of dialogue, descriptions of characters, anything that comes. Think about it before you fall asleep, dream about it. Fill yourself so full that you just have to start writing.

But  - don’t procrastinate! Research can be so pleasurable that it is tempting to just go on and on with it. You will know when you’re ready to begin transforming all that information into a brilliant novel.

7.      BL:    What are you working on now?

AH: I have embarked on a totally new project – the libretto for an opera set in ancient Pompeii with a 2^nd act in a downtown Toronto lesbian bar, circa 1980’s. Pomegranate spans 1900 years and tells of a love story between two young women who we first meet in the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii where they are being prepared through ritual for the revelation of the Mysteries. I am collaborating with cellist and composer Kye Marshall, a long-time friend and colleague from Toronto’s Heliconian Club in the heart of Yorkville.

Pomegranate started as a book of poems written after a visit to Pompeii in the early 2000s. Kye set some of the poems to music and, after a 10 minute presentation at the Heliconian, we were encouraged to develop the work as an opera. Developing new opera is a long-term project. Over several years we have raised funds, built audience, and completed a very successful workshop with Tapestry Opera, with professional singers, musicians, dramaturge and musical director. A second developmental workshop is scheduled for July 2017 at which time we hope to have sufficient support from co-producers to schedule a full performance run, followed by touring to summer music festivals.

Meanwhile I have a new novel forthcoming – Mad Hatter– and a second collection of Cuban stories – Angela of the Stones.

*****

This is the second in the series of five interviews on novel writing

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