Writing is soul support. Most things in life that we are surrounded by are about external things, material things, superficial things. Books are about the opposite. “Read a book and you are giving yourself an inner life,” says Jeanette Winterson. “Reading is a rendezvous with your soul.”

Writer Matt Haig shares twenty-nine other thoughts on writing over at the Waterstones blog. Meanwhile, on his own blog he recently listed the ten writing rules he likes to break, which include using adverbs and self-promoting. (To help him with the latter, Haig’s latest novel, The Humans, is out now.)

Théodora Armstrong is a Vancouver-based fiction writer, poet, and photographer. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines including Event, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, Descant, The New Quarterly, and Contemporary Verse 2. Her début short story collection, Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility, was recently released by House of Anansi Press.

Jane Campbell: Could you talk a little bit about how you decided to become a writer? I think a lot of people want to be writers, but not very many make the leap to try to do it as a career, which is not that easy.

Théodora Armstrong: No, it’s not easy. Do you want me to start from the very beginning? I think there was always something there for me ever since I was a kid. I loved telling stories when I was little. I went to an all-French school. At the time it was the only all-French school in BC, so they’d bus the kids from all around the lower mainland. I had these 45-minute bus rides to school, and I would tell stories on the bus to older kids.  I really liked when people laughed. I used to want to be a comedian for some reason, which is so funny to me now because I don’t have that kind of personality at all. When I was about 9, shyness set in and everything became more interior, and that’s when I began writing stories down.

I did my undergraduate degree at UBC. My major was creative writing and my minor was photography. After that, I went to Japan for two years and did some ESL teaching with my then boyfriend, now husband. When I came back, I did my master of fine arts in creative writing at UBC. That was really my first experience taking writing seriously and thinking of writing as my career. I knew that I would write a book as part of the master’s program, and my intent was to publish it. After I finished my master’s degree, I started submitting to literary magazines, and that was how I slowly started to build a body of work to show people and prove that I could publish something. It did take me quite a bit of time. The business aspect was sort of a mystery to me, and I didn’t rush to get things out there. In retrospect, I think I could have hustled a little more. The Journey Prize nomination [for “Whale Stories,” which is included in Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility] was the thing that made everything go very quickly. At that point, I had some interest in the whole manuscript, so I went and got an agent and then I got a publisher. But the whole process is really slow.

I actually have always found it the most difficult to write from a voice that is closest to my point of view.

JC: One thing I thought was really interesting about the collection is that you write from a lot of different perspectives in terms of different ages and different genders. I think a lot of writers are intimidated by the idea of writing from the perspective of a child narrator, for instance. Could you talk a little bit about how you get into the head of a character who is very different from you?

TA: I actually have always found it the most difficult to write from a voice that is closest to my point of view. I find it easier to write from a male point of view because it’s easier to start from a blank page and build up your character. You can pick and choose the details that interest you. I did write from closer to my own point of view in that book, in the story “Thanks to Carin.” That was by far the most difficult story for me to write. The novel I’m working on right now is from the closest perspective I’ve ever written to my own self, and it’s really difficult. I think it’s because instead of that blank page I feel like I’ve got a book of notes. I’ve already got so many ideas about what it means to be female and 33 and living this particular experience. It’s a lot more difficult to sort through all that stuff and get to a really clear voice for the character.

I find children’s perspectives are really some of my favorites to write. I would just write them over and over again. Sometimes I have to tell myself, you need to do an adult, people want to read adult voices, you can’t do all kids, you’ve got to spread them out a bit. I’ve always felt connected to that child’s voice. I have vivid memories from childhood. I can’t even say it’s from watching my daughter because a lot of the stories in the collection were written before she was born. I find the wonderful thing about writing children’s perspectives, depending on what you want to do with the story, is that there’s this wonderful purity with the child’s voice, and you can have them do anything because children don’t need to explain themselves. They can act erratically, they can act strangely, they can do something completely out of character and it’s okay because it’s a kid. In “Whale Stories,” for instance, the little boy is testing out a side of himself that’s strange and foreign to him in a lot of ways. Of course, it all backfires on him.

Research is also important. For the title story [about an air-traffic controller dealing with the aftermath of a fatal plane crash], I did a lot of interviews with my friend. He’s a flight services specialist, and once we were just out for drinks and he mentioned this experience he had with a water bomber that crashed. He didn’t tell a big story about it, he just mentioned it in passing. I got all these shivers up and down my arms, and I thought, “Oh, I want to write about that.” I kept thinking about it, and a couple months later I decided to finally get a hold of my friend, because I knew nothing about that kind of job and I knew I needed to research. I contacted him and asked him if he might share his experience.

What happens in the story is actually quite different than what happened to him, but he still inspired the story. He was wonderful. He was like a writer’s dream. He gave me tons of details about the story and tons of technical details about his work and what the control room looked and the dynamics between the staff members.

For  ”The Art of Eating” [a story about a self-destructive chef in North Vancouver], I interviewed some cooks and got a lot of details from them. I find getting those technical details can really help you get into the voice. It’s kind of like building a stage. You build every aspect of the set really meticulously and then someone tells you how they move around in it, and it’s like acting.

JC: I thought it was interesting that these stories take place in a number of different regions in BC. Could you talk about why you chose to do that?

TA: It wasn’t a conscious decision. The stories took place where I felt they needed to. I definitely take a lot of inspiration from landscape and geography. I find one of my first decisions when I write a story is where and when it takes place. I have to start there because it informs everything about my characters. I can’t start a voice without knowing where we are and when it’s taking place. When I started the collection in grad school, I knew all the stories were going to take place in BC. That was my thread. It was very loose, but I gave myself some parameters. I just knew I wanted it to be about this part of the world. And after that, it really just depended on the story.

JC: Have you spent time in all the places where the stories take place?

TA: I’d say I’ve been everywhere. There were little details I had to research along the way. For instance, I’ve never been to the neighborhood in Victoria mentioned in “Fishtails.” My editor thought the family should be from Victoria instead of Vancouver just for reasons of clarity with ferries. In any cases where the setting was integral to the story, I had really spent time there. I go up to Okanagan valley a lot because my grandmother’s from Penticton, and I find I can draw endlessly from that place. There’s a really interesting polarity there because you have such a fun, summer vacation spot with the lake and the motorboats, but then there’s these more dramatic, darker, harsher aspects of the landscape. It’s so dry. There are forest fires. There’s this tension up there I feel all the time. I don’t know if other people feel that or if it’s just something I’ve created in my mind.

I love that about BC, how it’s so beautiful but there’s also this treacherous, really wild side to it.

They have this lake monster up there, the Ogopogo. When I was kid that was terrifying to us. We loved the lake and we’d spend all day there but we didn’t want to go too far. At night we would tell stories about the Ogopogo and get freaked out, and the next day we wouldn’t go in the lake. So for me, in my stories, I’m looking for that tension. I think BC really has a lot of that tension because the landscapes are very dramatic here and people are really outdoorsy, but it’s also very dangerous. I love that about BC, how it’s so beautiful but there’s also this treacherous, really wild side to it. It’s great for inserting drama into your story.

JC: Short story collections are more difficult to publish than other genres including novels. Do you have any advice for writers hoping to publish short story collections?

TA: It is tough. The whole time I was writing my short stories people kept saying, “Why aren’t you writing a novel? It’s so much easier to publish a novel.” I’m sure there’s truth to that, but if you feel like you can write something good, then go for it. What I’ve found so far is that the reception is really warm and people get really excited about short stories. I know I get excited when someone comes out with a new short story collection. As far as the route to getting published, for me getting published in literary magazines helped tons. If someone’s putting together a collection, as they’re going along they should just be submitting over and over again. My stories were always submitted and when they came back, I would just send them out again.

I learned quickly that if I got rejected, I didn’t necessarily have to make changes. I just sent the story back out somewhere else, and eventually it would get published somewhere. The nice thing about literary magazines is they can be very supportive. You can start to get that experience with editing and you also build a community for yourself. Now that I have a book out, I’ve already connected to so many different writers through the lit journals. They give you all these different avenues to go to for readings and press.

I also think if you’re putting together a short story collection, it’s really important to think of it as a book and not just random stories. When I see new story collections come out, there’s almost always a thread throughout the stories. It makes them easier to sell, I guess. But I also think it makes the collection stronger if you can find commonalities when you’re bringing the stories together. Sometimes you find connections during the writing process. I knew all the stories in my collection were going to take place in BC, but beyond that I didn’t really give myself any strict parameters. As I wrote, I began to see all these threads going through the stories and how they fit together. I think that will come through from your subconscious as you’re writing.

JC: Could you talk a little bit about what you’re working on now?

TA: I’m working on a novel, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet. It’s still in its seedling stage. It doesn’t take place in BC, so it will be different for sure. I can say that it’s contemporary and about my age group.

Read Jane Campbell’s review of Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility here.

Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility by Théodora Armstrong

Review by Jane Campbell

In Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility, Théodora Armstrong’s vivid and engrossing debut short story collection, the breathtaking and otherworldly landscapes of British Columbia serve as backdrop for an array of human dramas that feel no less fresh and startling for being eminently relatable. A harried father makes clumsy attempts to bond with his moody teenage daughters on a weekend trip to the Gulf Islands. A young woman escapes the stress of her impending wedding to visit her aimless younger sister in the Okanagan valley. In the verdant canyons of North Vancouver, a teenage girl pines for her childhood best friend as her own innocence slips away bit by bit.

Clear Skies includes more traditional short stories, such as the Journey Prize finalist “Whale Stories,” a shocking piece about a lonely young boy obsessively digging a hole on a rugged Sunshine Coast beach. While these shorter pieces are certainly well-crafted and satisfying, the true standouts of this collection are the three longer stories, including the title piece, a haunting story about the aftermath of a plane crash from the point of view of a novice air traffic controller. Thematically complex and intricately plotted, these longer pieces read more like mini-novels than short stories.

Clear Skies is the first book in the House of Anansi Press’s new short story imprint Astoria, and it certainly bolsters the case for the unique literary value of short story collections. Most literary magazines (PRISM included) do not have the resources to publish 50 pages of fiction from a single author. Short story collections give authors like Armstrong an important platform to showcase the depth of their talent and explore the full possibilities of the medium.

Beyond its obvious literary merit, Clear Skies succeeds on a more visceral level, pulling the reader into the emotional realities of a diverse array of characters. Armstrong deftly renders the inner lives of characters from wildly divergent backgrounds. The voice of an awkward ten-year-old girl is as vivid and believable as the voice of a middle-aged man mired in self-destruction. These characters and the richly detailed miniature worlds they inhabit will linger in readers’ minds long after they put down the book. With this impressive debut collection, Théodora Armstrong establishes herself as a fresh and multi-faceted talent, capable of mining everyday human dramas to create evocative and lasting tales about the human condition.

Photo by Braden Haggerty

By Kim McCullough

One Good Hustle, your latest novel, burst out of the gates and blew away the barriers between genres; it was long-listed for the Giller, as well as short-listed for the prestigious CLA award for Young Adult Book of the Year. What do you think it is about One Good Hustle that has such a cross-generational appeal?

These nods from juries have been a big surprise for me. I don’t gravitate toward the sort of “Big Themes” that juries tend to enjoy. The wars I write about take place in the living room. They involve people close to home because that’s where I find my sense of immediacy.

Telling this story in a 16-year-old’s voice was something of a leap of faith. It felt natural and visceral, but I wondered if somehow that voice would place the whole thing in a kind of neither/nor place and find no readers whatsoever. It’s surprising to me that teenagers are interested. The YA books I hear about usually involve witches and vampires —or at least a dystopian future.

One Good Hustle follows some of the tropes of a YA novel: Teen protagonist, lack of parents, a bit of romance — yet it was never specifically designated as YA. Was this a deliberate choice, or not even an issue?

I wasn’t trying to appeal to a young reader at all. The first scraggly draft of One Good Hustle was a completely different story told from the point of view of Sammie in her 30s. It wasn’t working. The only chunks that did work were the flashbacks, all of which were about Sammie as a young girl. My editor suggested that I put it aside for a while and let my subconscious work it out.  I came back to her a year later with a hundred pages of 16-year-old Sammie — which came out in a finger-flying rush.  She loved that version — it felt to her as it did to me: visceral and furious. I always intended an adult reader. And from what I understand Random House rejected a lot of cover ideas because they looked too YA.

It’s interesting to me that the relationship between Sammie and Drew could be considered a romance. From Sammie’s point of view, it’s a bit of an anti-romance. She’s not interested in sex, she’s interested in knowing one human being with whom she can’t take down the mask, divulge the truth of herself.

How do you feel about the marketing labels required by publishers and bookstores?

In a way, it’s odd that a 16-year-old narrator causes people to assume a 16-year-old reader. I wonder if it’s because of the female voice. Nobody suggested that Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha or David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green were young adult books. Both stories told by young protagonists.

I find the creation of a YA genre a little ridiculous, frankly. Catcher in the Rye was certainly never written as a “YA novel”. It was adult fiction. But teens related. The issues that were being tackled, themes like social class, poverty, wealth, external judgment, isolation, prostitution (sexual and otherwise) — these are things that affect us all regardless of our age. The thing I find annoying about YA fiction is the perceived need to write down to a younger mind.

There is a movie based on the character Marlene (Sammie’s mother) that is being filmed right now. Tell me a little bit about that. Are you involved beyond writing the original novella?

When I was first re-writing One Good Hustle, I was banging out short stories, putting Sammie through her paces to make sure I knew her. Meanwhile I got an email from Melanie Little who was editing a new YA series and she was looking for “edgy”, “gritty” stories told in the first person by a teenager. I had several of them in front of me so I thought what the hell, I’m broke. I reworked one and sold it. Before the story came out (as half of a flip-book), I heard from Ana Valine, an old acquaintance from the film business. She was interested in optioning my first novel, Going Down Swinging, with an eye to directing and producing it as a feature film. In the end, she wondered if the novel was too ambitious for her first and asked if she could read a few of my short stories. I showed her the Marlene story. She fell in love and bought the film option a few weeks later. I was not involved with the process beyond that.

Does your acting career influence your writing?

I don’t have an acting career anymore. I used to audition and do small roles here and there, but these days I just use film as a fall-back. I’m a union member so extra-work and stand-in work are the best paying unskilled labor jobs I know of. I suppose, though, that what you learn as an actor are tools similar to those you need as a writer.  The actor’s notion of using “emotional recall” in order to generate a parallel for the characters he or she plays is really important when you are trying to create a character who feels authentic and fleshed out.

I once had a writing instructor (Peter Oliva, who wrote The City of Yes) who taught the importance of searching out the subconscious obsessions in our writing: themes that repeat; symbols that come back time and again; characters we revisit in different ways. Have you noticed any obsessions in your own writing? Any underlying similarities in your characters?

I write about families over and over. The novels have tended to have an emphasis on mother-daughter relationships: wild-child women, mothers who don’t “behave,” addiction, social class, religion, vulnerable kids.

Who is your author crush?

Flannery O’Connor is a big one for me. She is funny and pointed and ferocious. She takes no shit and no prisoners.

What is the best writing advice you’ve been given? 

Use the AIC method: Ass In Chair.  It’s the only way it’s going to get done.

(See Kim McCullough’s review of One Good Hustle here.)

(W)e wouldn’t have many books at all, would we, if writers stopped every time they asked themselves that question. Who’s going to listen to me? Who’s going to care? I face that question every day when I sit down at my computer, and still the words come. Slowly. Still I find myself writing dark things, magical things, and sometimes even sexy things. At some point, who’s going to listen to me gets answered with I want to tell this story anyway.

At The National Post this week, writer Amanda Leduc talks about the difficulty of writing about sex in the era of Fifty Shades of Grey. Her first novel, The Miracles of Ordinary Men, is out now from ECW Press. Read the full article here.

One Good Hustle, by Billie Livingston

Review by Kim McCullough

Sixteen-year-old Sammie is a street-smart, take-no-crap young woman. Her parents are con-artists; her father lit out for the east a long time ago, leaving Sammie and her mom on their own. Lately, Sammie’s alcoholic mother, Marlene, has slipped into a suicidal depression, leaving Sammie to try and hold the edges of their tattered home life together.

Unable to take any more of her mother’s suicidal meltdowns, Sammie leaves the chaos at home and goes to stay with her friend Jill’s family. Sammie’s judgments about Jill, and Jill’s more traditional parents, Ruby and Leo, are at once harsh and hilariously honest. It soon becomes obvious that no one can escape Sammie’s skewering wit: not her teachers, not her friends, and certainly not Drew, the boy she likes. But before long, Sammie’s carefully constructed tough-girl facade starts to crack, and the reader catches glimpses of a lost girl in need of direction.

This vulnerability in Sammie returns again and again. She seeks someone to care for her, someone that she can allow to see her pain, even as she endeavours to hide it from her family, friends, teachers, and a young man who seems to really care for her. Sammie walks the line that all teens walk—desire for autonomy and freedom, while at the same time, not quite being able to let go of the need for home and a touchstone.

Livingston’s writing is so clear and straightforward that, like the flashes of Sammie’s vulnerability, it takes a few pages to realize the depth of the layers of story that lie beneath the surface. The timeline shifts seamlessly between the present and past events that have brought Sammie and her mother to their life in a small Burnaby apartment. Livingston is a master of dialogue, delivering snappy, realistic teen-age conversations, laugh-out-loud sarcastic comments, and heart-breaking subtext, sometimes all at once.

Though the events are coloured through Sammie’s eyes, Livingston deftly exposes the shades of the other characters a bit at a time. By the last page, the other main characters in the book are vibrant, living entities, as entrenched in the plot as Sammie. Drew, Sammie’s not-quite-love interest, is torn between being a good friend to Sammie, and wanting more. Marlene almost takes on the dimmed shimmer of an old movie star, her glory days behind her. Even Rub, grating as she is to Sammie, stays with the reader long after the book is closed.

One Good Hustle was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for CLA’s YA Book of the year, cementing its place as a work of not only literary fiction, but also crossing genres to find a strong audience with young adults. It’s clear that Sammie’s struggles and the vivid, heartbreaking world inhabited by a cast of well-crafted characters will resonate with readers of any age.

On Thursday: An interview with Billie Livingston.

National Magazine Awards:

Jean McNeil’s “Ice Diaries” (published in PRISM 50.3) is a finalist in the category of Personal Journalism.

PRISM’s Executive Editor Sierra Skye Gemma  is a finalist in the category of Best New Magazine Writer.

PRISM’s Designer andrea bennett  is a finalist in the category of Politics & Public Interest.

Western Magazine Awards:

Yasuko Thanh’s  “Hustler” (published in PRISM 50.3)  is a finalist in the category of Fiction.

Sherry Wong’s “Dandelion” (published in PRISM 51.1)  is a finalist in the category of New Writer.

PRISM’s Editorial Board Member Rosemary Anderson  is a finalist in the category of New Writer.

House of Anansi Broken Social Scene Contest:

PRISM’s Executive Editor Sierra Skye Gemma has been long-listed under song 6. Pacific Theme.

PRISM’s Designer andrea bennett has been long-listed under song 5. Looks Just Like the Sun.

PRISM’s Contest Reader Leah Mol has been long-listed under under song 11. Lover’s Spit.

PRISM’s Editorial Assistant Christopher Evans has been long-listed under song 3. Stars and Sons.

Congratulations to all our finalists! We are wishing you luck!

Read “The Skeleton Coast” in the current issue of PRISM, and find out more about the author at her website.

Of the photo, Lawson says:

“Here is George Washington Burhans in Arlington, New York (just outside Poughkeepsie) in 1890, with his two horses David B. and Bert. He was my great-grandfather, and in 1890 he would have been exactly the age I am now (44). You can see that Bert, possibly aware that this is his one big chance at immortality, has turned to face the camera.”

In his essay, Lawson also makes mention of a funerary figure of a female polo player from ca. 7th/8th century China. In the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum, it can be seen here.

Want to read more of Lawson’s work? Check out his latest book, Down at the Bottom of the Box, which was mentioned by CBC as one of the “Five Must-Read Books” for 2013.

Come, travel the world with us, take in the sights and the sounds. Our creative non-fiction winner, JonArno Lawson brings us to summer camp, while runners-up Carolyn White and Jean McNeil describe stories in San Francisco and Namibia, and contest judge Andreas Schroeder issues CNF writers a challenge: will you take it on?

Explore Japan, small town Canada, and the mysterious ‘L—, Ontario’ in fiction by Jonathan Mendelsohn, Joel McCarthy, and Pasha Malla.  Join our poets, Jessie Jones, Tammy Armstrong, David Clink, Julia Herperger, Jeff Musgrave, Elena E. Johnson, Jim Johnstone, Caroline Wong, Michael Patrick Jessome, and matt robinson in far-flung corners of the world: from Tribeca to New Mexico to Redberry Lake.

But we know what you’re really thinking: is that doll-like kid on the cover for real? She’s very real and kind of a big deal in Japan: ‘Miraichan,’ photographed by Kotori Kawashima.

Check out all this and so much more. Get your issue here, while supplies last!