QWF Writes: Interview with Robert Edison Sandiford

This conversation between Pamela Hensley and Robert Edison Sandiford is an extended version of the original posted as part of the QWF Writes series.

EVERY COUPLE OF WEEKS, Robert Edison Sandiford calls me from Barbados. Robert is one of this year’s Quebec Writers' Federation mentors and I am his protégé. We’ve made arrangements to speak at 5 pm via Skype so this interview would feel more face-to-face. At 5:10, we still have no audio so he switches from his laptop to his desktop. At 5:25 the recording app on my phone stops working. At 5:37 we decide we’ll have to hobble back and forth between the computers, a phone, and another phone app to make it work. Afterwards, when it’s all sorted, he say: “Well, there’s a lesson about tenacity.”Robert was born in Montreal to Barbadian parents. He is the author of nine books that range in form from short and long fiction to memoir, graphic novels, and erotica. Over a period of four months, he’s worked with me on my own collection of stories and we’ve talked about many things: process and voice, the German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, and how baking helps to reduce stress. Robert answers my questions below.

- Pamela Hensley

PAMELA HENSLEY:Let’s start with a quote from Fairfield, your most recent collection of short stories. In reference to engaging fiction, you say: “All that matters…is the individual and the moment.” Can you expand on that?ROBERT SANDIFORD:In the context of the collection, it had to do with making the most of art. It had to do with knowing when something is ready or when an artist has what it takes. It comes from a quote by Matthew Arnold [“For the creation of a masterwork…two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment”]. How do you know when you’ve got what it takes? All we are is who we are and the talent that we have. My contention is that most people are a little better than they think they are. They can do better than they’ve done.PH:This is why you’re a mentor.RS:Maybe.PH:Besides being a mentor, you’re an editor and teacher. How does one turn a good manuscript into a great one?RS:There has to be that spark within the work itself, or within the writer. It might even be both. In terms of a process, if you see that spark you have to figure out not so much what’s working with it but what’s not working. Note the stuff that I don’t change – look at it and say, ah this is good, he didn’t touch this – then note what I questioned. What you’re doing right, you’re doing right. That’s not an issue. The real challenge is figuring out how to improve or how to fix the problems in a manuscript. Once you get that right, you bring everything up. I think that’s how you turn a good manuscript into a great one.PH:How much of the process is intuitive vs. deliberate?RS:Maybe it’s a bit more intuitive than we think. The grammar, the rules and laws, if you know that you can fix it but sometimes, looking at, let’s see even your own work – at Til Menken for instance [one of my stories] – I can see the guy but am I seeing him as clearly as I would like to? There’s a bit of a shadowy area there and I can’t pinpoint where that shadow’s coming from, or what’s casting it, but I know I need more light on him. You kind of go with that.PH:What about turning good writers into great writers? Can you do that?RS:Possibly. Possibly. But there has to be something inside that person already that lends themselves to greatness. And it may depend on how we define greatness. There are a lot of artists, not just writers, people who never enjoy recognition while they were alive or young enough to enjoy it. So there’s that question again, of the individual and the moment, and the individual and talent. There’s certain things you can teach people to make them better writers but that sort of greatness, that may also depend on themselves.PH:Okay. So good writers can at least get better.RS:They need someone to help them fix their mistakes.PH:They need an editor! What else helps?RS:A writer who pays attention. A writer who listens. You can advise somebody only so much and say, look, do this, do that, and chances are you’ll get better results. But you know how it is. People get their own ideas. When a writer trusts his or her editor and an editor trusts her writer, that’s when you can get some results happening. That’s what really helps to bring out greatness. When I edit someone’s work, I ask, what are you trying to accomplish? If you say, I’m really interested in Erpenbeck’s style of approach then I’ll say, okay, let’s look at that and see how we accomplish that for yourself, not mimicking, not imitating, but finding your own style and voice. It really is about working with a good editor. And if you can’t get a good editor get a good reader or something like that.PH:Should developing writers work as editors to become better writers?RS:It can be useful for writers to work as editors but not every writer makes a good editor.PH:Hmm. Why not?RS:This might sound funny, but it’s because they can’t write. Technically. Some writers are great storytellers but in terms of getting that down on the page, in a way that won’t have readers running the opposite direction, that’s a challenge. Other writers are very technically proficient but they struggle to bring their stories alive. And some writers are gifted and they can do both.PH:How does one judge the quality of one’s own work?RS:Honesty. If you know you have a line that is not as true as it needs to be, put an asterisk beside it. Go back to it. Even put a note next to it for the editor, this section, I can't get it right. Or the ending is eluding me. Sometimes you can fake it but most people know, so what’s the point?PH:Sometimes, in workshops, say, readers are trying to be kind. How do you know who to trust?RS:You have to recognize who is sympathetic to your work. Who gets you and where you’re coming from. That doesn’t mean you should only side with people who agree with you or who are like-minded, but there might be someone in your group that, no matter what you bring them, no matter how good the work is, they won’t see it. It might be personal bias, jealousy. Whatever it is. Other people will come and see exactly what you’re doing. But they won’t just see your good stuff, they’ll also say, I like what you did but I think it would be stronger if you did that. And you say, oh. Oh! I have to step up my game now.PH:In Fairfield, the editor writes that G. Brandon Sisnett borrowed from other authors including one from Montreal who wrote Caribbean fiction on the themes of “familial loss and managing the pain of living.” Which are themes that happen to recur in your work. Would you like to talk about theme?RS:Yeah. I’m curious about theme. Both of us are writing from a particular place. Germany finds its way into your stories, as well as Canada. For me, it’s Barbados and Canada. Montreal. Bridgetown. Theme is distinct from subject matter but they inform each other. For me a sense of place is important. I write out of where I am but also where I come from. I do believe that all writing is regional, in a sense. People talk about things being universal but I don’t know how much we really think about it as writers. We want everyone to read our stories and everyone to relate to them but I think, again, it goes to honesty. If you write in a way that is honest, the regional will get you to the universal. Someone will pick up the story half way around the world and say, I relate.PH:Is place a detail?RS:Place is a necessary detail, your characters have got to be somewhere, but it’s more than that. It’s a space in which you invite the reader to share an experience. It’s about learning, actually. I have a friend who says, if she’d not learning anything in writing what she’ writing, then she stops writing the story. She wants other people to learn something. If I write about a particular place, I want you to feel that place. I want you to experience it as if you were actually there. Unless having a non-descript setting is important to telling the story, then why have this non-descript thing? And I get the answer, but I want it to be universal. I just say, stop. Stop. What you may be doing is taking out the necessary edges that people need to relate to the story even more so.PH:What about writing to correct misunderstandings about a place? Do you do that?RS:That’s certainly a part of it. Because where I often write out of, the Caribbean, Barbados, is misunderstood. It’s an area of darkness for people. They have a particular view of that place. But this is true of any place, even bigger places. Everyone thinks they know New York. Everyone thinks they know Germany. Do they? I think writers do write to correct misunderstandings. But one has to be careful. It’s not about serving yourself, it’s about serving the story.PH:Junot Diaz talks about this.RS:Yeah. He would because he does come out of the Caribbean as well. Dominican Republic. And yes, it’s a big deal for certain writers. It’s important to get this right. This place is a real place. Erpenbeck is very much in my mind now, with where she’d writing from. People will mythologize a place. They will deliberately twist what a place is. I’m going to get one of her books from you! You see, I don’t think we’re too far apart in what we’re trying to do as writers. You’re also trying to offer a measure of correction in telling an entertaining story, which is important. But you’re saying, look here and understand. Understand these people. Understand this place. Then you might also understand a bit more about yourself and your own humanity. Just going to the last story you sent me, Manny’s Bar. I found your use of the “Heidi” character interesting. She was misunderstood. German, Norwegian, Swedish, whatever. We all know this. I got a lot about a place through displacement, through the character.PH:You’re referred to in some blurbs as a literary activist. What’s a literary activist?RS:The simplest answer is, these days, people don’t read as much as they could, should, used to and our literacy has slipped. The type of activism I’m engaged in is on the literary front, making sure that people read – my books but also other people’s books. It’s making sure that writers, such as yourself, with obvious talent have opportunities to progress. To get better. To, I dare say it, outstrip me. We’re all competitors. Iron sharpens iron. So it’s about pushing literary works and literacy.PH:What’s the difference between style and voice?RS:Style and voice tend to be synonymous. But to make a differentiation, when writers are starting out I like to talk about an approach. I used to talk about style but I think writers get confused. They say, but the way I put it down is a style. I like to use all these ellipses when I write, that’s my style. And you say, no, no, that’s more of an approach and it may even be a bad approach. Style is something that you develop over time. Voice, to me, is all those things combined. It’s reading a work and recognizing who it is. Ultimately, what comes with it is a commitment to telling a story in a particular way. It cannot be told by anybody else.PH:And how do writers develop their voice?RS:I think writers should perhaps concentrate more on storytelling and less on developing that voice. As long as you’re writing, as long as you’re writing honestly, that will emerge. And when it emerges may be very different from when you think it does. I remember, a writer once said to me, Robert, I see with this book you finally found your voice. And I thought I’d found it before. The thing is, just to write the best stories you can. Write them as authentically as you can.PH:Is voice conscious?RS:Yes and no. I think all writers aspire to sound a certain way. We don’t write to sound like anybody else, we write to sound, so we think initially, like ourselves. But voice goes beyond that. I think at the highest level, it just comes out. You write and the voice that you have comes out.PH:Like personality?RS:Yes, I think it is like personality. But that can be a dangerous thing, especially when people know you. Someone might pick up one of your stories, for instance, and say, this sounds like Pamela. The way she wrote that, I heard her say that before. And they completely miss the story that is there because they’re looking for you. You will be there, I hear your voice already in the stories, it’s emerging, it’s developing, but personality is a tricky word. But readers aren’t looking for personality, they’re looking for character, for plot, for atmosphere.PH:Is it still possible for writers to be “discovered”?RS:I was reading about Michael Chabon and his own trajectory as a writer. I think it’s still possible to get discovered but it calls for somebody to be there in your corner. I don’t think anybody gets anywhere without somebody’s assistance. When it comes to doing what we do, it requires talent, determination, and luck. You know. Once you have those three, you will get somewhere. Will you get as far as X,Y,Z, plug in a name, I don’t know. But I think people are discovered all the time. I think I’m discovering writers all the time.PH:You published your first story collection more than 20 years ago, in 1995. Does it get any easier?RS:Hell, no. [Laughter]. Publishing is more difficult now than it was before. There’s more competition, more avenues. The Internet has changed the industry and how we approach what we do. Coming up with a story, I don’t know that that gets any easier. What gets easier, maybe, is knowing what works and what doesn’t. But the challenge remains the same. It’s just you and the page, or the screen, and you got to make it work. How do you know if you’ve made it work? That goes to instinct. This is maybe where the older writer has the advantage, the more certain you are of the type of success you might have, the more certain you are that this is working, there’s butter in my pan and it’s flowing. And you also know when it’s not. Does it get easier? No. But I wake up every morning doing what I do and I have no regrets. Ever. That’s a hell of a thing to be able to say.