12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nadine Sander-Green
Nadine Sander-Green grew upin Kimberley, British Columbia. After living across Canada—in Victoria, Torontoand Whitehorse—she now calls Calgary, Alberta, home. She completed her BFA fromthe University of Victoria and her MFA from the University of Guelph. In 2015,Nadine won the PEN Canada New Voices Award for writers under 30. Her writinghas appeared in the Globe and Mail, Grain, Prairie Fire, Outside,carte blanche, Hazlitt and elsewhere.
1 - How did your first bookchange your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? Howdoes it feel different?
Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit is myfirst book. Writing it for the past decade has been the most humbling andgratifying process. I wrote it living in different cities across the country,through marriage and divorce, suffering and healing from a chronic illness,pregnancy and the birth of my first child—this list goes on. Having themanuscript as a project to lean into during the highs and lows of my 20s and30s, was, in retrospect, such a beautiful thing. It was a constant companionduring the good times and propped me up through the hard times.
2 - How did you come to fictionfirst, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I was a journalist first, andthen naturally shifted into essays when I wanted to dig into more creativeprojects. When I finally started to dabble into fiction about ten years ago, Ifelt a great relief and freedom to be able to just…make things up. I find thegenre so much more joyous than non-fiction.
3 - How long does it take tostart any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly,or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their finalshape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I generally write slowly. When Isit down to write, I go back over what I wrote the day before to tinker andedit. That helps me get back in the flow of things and can take up much of thewriting time. By the time I finally get to the end, my draft isn’t too far offfrom a final draft. Sometimes I wish I could write messy and just dive into theheat of the moment, but it doesn’t work like that for me.
4 - Where does a work of proseusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
With Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit,I knew it was a book from the very beginning, but many other ideas start andstay as shorter pieces. A work begins with a certain feeling of heat and energyinside of me. I’ve learned to trust that feeling and that it means there isenough substance there to create a story with resonance. If I just go, Oh Iwould like to write about this character or this thing that happened to me, it’snot enough. It falls flat. As wishy-washy as it sounds, I wait for the energyin feeling or theme, and then I start from there and move towards story.
5 - Are public readings part ofor counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoysdoing readings?
I like doing readings. There’s a partof me that enjoys being in the spotlight for a few minutes and entertaining acrowd. I think I’m right on the cusp of the introvert-extrovert continuum, so Ido get nervous for readings and I really only want to be on stage for a coupleminutes, and then I’m happy to hide in the crowd again.
6 - Do you have any theoreticalconcerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answerwith your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I wouldn’t say I’m trying toanswer any specific questions with my work. If I did frame it that way, I suspectit would paralyze my writing process and leave me with nothing on the page.
I do think a lot about who hasthe right to tell what story. These are not new questions, but do I write abouta place—a land and a culture—from where I am not deeply rooted? If I visit orlive in a place but then leave and write about it, am I “taking” stories thataren’t rightfully mine? When I wrote non-fiction, I felt deeply conflictedabout writing about “real people”, and this is partly why I switched tofiction. The freedom in fiction is a relief on multiple levels.
7 – What do you see the currentrole of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do youthink the role of the writer should be?
I think the role of the writer isto cut through the theatrics of our everyday lives; to look deeper and seewhat’s there. Ever since I was a kid, I felt like there was a certain boredomto the daily routine of life. It was only when I started writing as a teenagerwhen I understood that art is medicine for that unfulfilling feeling of solelyliving on the surface of life.
8 - Do you find the process ofworking with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. As a journalist, I gotused to the big, red editors’ marker and understand how helpful it was to havean outside perspective on my work. With my novel, Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit, myeditor took it in directions I would never have thought of on my own.His keen eye made it a far better book.
9 - What is the best piece of adviceyou've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Don’t obsess over renovating yourbody or renovating your home. It’s a never-ending cycle.
This advice isn’t particularlyabout writing, but I do think that if you want to have a deep writing life youhave to put less energy into the more material, physical things of life.
10 - How easy has it been for youto move between genres (short stories to the novel)? What do you see as theappeal?
The hardest leap for me was whenI was much younger and moving from journalism to essays. I was so accustomed towriting short, quippy pieces that it was a challenge to go deeper into a pieceand really let my mind wander. Once I got the hang of that, moving from essaysto fiction was more of a breeze.
11 - What kind of writing routinedo you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you)begin?
When I was writing my novel, I managedto scrape enough money together to work part-time and then could spend a goodchunk of the day writing. I usually wrote for about three hours. Now that Ihave a toddler, my writing life looks much different. When I do find time towrite, it’s in short bursts while my son naps on the weekend, or during lunchhour in my office boardroom. Having a child has helped me be looser with mewriting. I just don’t have time to be precious about it.
12 - When your writing getsstalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
When I am deep in a writingproject, I find reading books I love to be more of a distraction than aninspiration. I worry that my own voice will start to resemble that of myfavourite writers instead of being authentically my own. Getting outside angoing for a walk helps me immensely. It loosens the agitation and anxiety in mybrain, that stuck feeling, and allows for ideas to flow again.
13 - What was your lastHallowe'en costume?
I haven’t dressed up in years. Asan adult, I have never enjoyed Halloween. There’s something about thesickly-sweet candy and the booze and being forced to find a costume (lastminute, for me) that never sat right with me. I also find Halloween is a timewhere the destructiveness in people comes out and it always puts me on edge.
That being said, I dressed my two-year-oldson up as Einstein last year and it was a hoot.
14 - David W. McFadden once saidthat books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence yourwork, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
The wilderness inspires my workgreatly. I grew up in a very outdoors-y family, and after a brief stintrejecting that lifestyle as a teenager, it’s always been a big part of my life.Living in the Yukon, in particular, defined my relationship with the land,which features prominently in my novel Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit. In my late20s I went on a 16-day canoe trip in northern Yukon. Being immersed in the wildfor that long changed everything from the way I saw myself to how I incorporatenature into my work.
15 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’ve been really into writerslike Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy, lately. There’s something so sharp abouttheir work that I deeply admire. They don’t seem to care to stick to any rulesabout genre or style. There is never an explanation or self-deprecation, just adistilled, even steely, view of what it means to be a woman and a writer today.I find their work incredibility refreshing and I hope to be as confident andunapologetic as these two women one day.
16 - What would you like to dothat you haven't yet done?
Learn how to cook steakperfectly. Swim in Greece. Get my son ready for his first day of kindergarten.Adopt a dog. Teach a class at university. Take a long train trip.
17 - If you could pick any otheroccupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think youwould have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’d like to be a therapist. Iunderstand that dealing with the weight of other people’s problems every daywould be exhausting, but I am just so intrigued by other people’s lives and howthey work through their darkest times. I think it would be deep and meaningfulwork, like writing.
18 - What made you write, asopposed to doing something else?
I was no good at anything else inhigh school, when I was thinking of what I wanted to pursue in university. Tobe honest, I was no good at writing either, but I had an inspiring creativewriting teacher who made me feel like writing was a worthwhile thing to do withyour life. I started my degree in creative writing quite young, at 17, andagain, I really didn’t have the life experience or wisdom to write anythingmeaningful, but it was all practice and I truly believe practice is everything.At some point in my 20s I realized there was nothing quite like the feeling of havingwritten for a few hours, and I have followed that feeling ever since.
19 - What was the last great bookyou read? What was the last great film?
I’m going to go back to Deborah Levy here, and her brilliant memoir The Cost of Living. After goingthrough a divorce, she rents out a shed in an artist friend’s backyard andfinds a new way of living. It’s somehow inspiring and bleak at the same time,which I find true to much of life.
As for films, I’ll jump on thebandwagon and say that Past Lives, from Korean-Canadian filmmaker CelineSong, has stayed with me for a long time. It hits the tone of bittersweet justperfectly.
20 - What are you currentlyworking on?
I have a couple different ideafor novels floating through my head, but I am in the thick of early motherhoodright now and haven’t figured out how to dedicate significant time writing. Ishaped my 20s and early 30s around writing and now the task is to figure outhow to write when it feels like every hour of the day is taken up by thesebeautiful and complicated little people. At the same time, I’m trying to allowmyself to transform as a woman and I understand my artistic practice might lookvery different for the next few years.
