On Meeting Other Writers
A friend of mine gave me a review 
copy of Irma Voth by Miriam Toews a few years ago. It hadn’t been released to the public yet, it didn’t have a proper cover, and on the back it warned me that there might be spelling mistakes or copy-editing errors riddled throughout. Nestled inside the front cover was a folded press release that included contact information for the publicist.“Shit, do you think this means I could interview Miriam Toews?” I asked my friend.“I don’t see why not.”In my mind, Toews was impossibly famous. She was the author of A Complicated Kindness, my favorite novel. I figured she existed in some ethereal otherworld reserved for people with names like Ondaatje and Hemingway. It had never occurred to me that she might be a real person that could walk around, talk and give interviews.My friend encouraged me to interview Toews. “She won’t have time to talk to a student newspaper,” I said.“Believe me, writers need all the attention they can get.”My friend was right, and a week later I found myself on the other side of a phone line with Toews. She talked in a meandering, lackadaisical tone that reminded me of her character Nomi Nickel. She was funny, and didn’t seem to take herself too seriously. We were almost finished the interview when I mentioned that we’d met once before, at a reading in Victoria. I told her I was a huge fan.“No way? Thanks, man,” she said. “So you’re a writer?”Miriam Toews was asking about me? I started telling her about some of my work, about how my story “Sea to Sky” was about a father-daughter relationship similar to the one at the center of Kindness, and she murmured appreciatively and said some friendly, encouraging things.“You know, thank you,” she said. “I really needed to hear from a fan today.”She told me that she’d been having some familial trouble, and told me some startlingly personal things about herself. She said she’d been feeling stressed and overwhelmed, but talking to me made her feel like her work was meaningful.“I really appreciate it,” she said.Wow.I had a similar experience years later talking to Michael Christie, author of The Beggar’s Garden. Christie is a former professional skateboarder, and his book had just won the Vancouver Book Award. He had interesting things to say during the interview, but he seemed more interested in chatting with me. He wanted to know about the thesis manuscript I was working on at UBC, and what I thought about the school. We ended up gossiping about teachers and talking about our processes as writers.“I think for me, you know, it was weird to realize writers were real people. That’s why I went to UBC, just so I could see they really exist,” Christie told me.Every new writer I meet expresses the same thing: our profession is so solitary and anti-social, sometimes it feels like we’re writing in a vacuum. And every writer I meet is hungry to meet other writers, and to talk about what it’s like to live this fucking weird life we’ve chosen.Meeting other writers has been the most beneficial thing I’ve done as a writer. Every interview I’ve had has given me new insight, advice and guidance on how to succeed. Basically, I ask them how they did it. And then I try to copy them.For the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with the work of an East Coast writer named Kris Bertin. I interviewed him when he won the Jack Hodgins Founder’s Award at The Malahat Review, and again when his story “Is Alive and Can Move” was published in PRISM International. In a strange twist of fate, I ended up moving into his apartment in Halifax when I moved to the East Coast.Kris showed up the first day I moved in with a twelve-pack of beer, eager to talk. Every time I asked, he gave me back issues of his work in various literary journals like The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence and Pilot. At first I expected him to be cold, or maybe intimidating, but every time I invited him out for beer he showed up. These days we keep up a weekly correspondence and play chess against each other on our phones. I count him as one of my closest friends.Basically, if you want to be a writer, go meet some. I guarantee they’ll be stoked.Will Johnson is a writer, journalist and photographer from Victoria, B.C. He lives with his girlfriend Darby and his budgie Hemingway. Find him here: http://www.goodwilljohnson.com/
copy of Irma Voth by Miriam Toews a few years ago. It hadn’t been released to the public yet, it didn’t have a proper cover, and on the back it warned me that there might be spelling mistakes or copy-editing errors riddled throughout. Nestled inside the front cover was a folded press release that included contact information for the publicist.“Shit, do you think this means I could interview Miriam Toews?” I asked my friend.“I don’t see why not.”In my mind, Toews was impossibly famous. She was the author of A Complicated Kindness, my favorite novel. I figured she existed in some ethereal otherworld reserved for people with names like Ondaatje and Hemingway. It had never occurred to me that she might be a real person that could walk around, talk and give interviews.My friend encouraged me to interview Toews. “She won’t have time to talk to a student newspaper,” I said.“Believe me, writers need all the attention they can get.”My friend was right, and a week later I found myself on the other side of a phone line with Toews. She talked in a meandering, lackadaisical tone that reminded me of her character Nomi Nickel. She was funny, and didn’t seem to take herself too seriously. We were almost finished the interview when I mentioned that we’d met once before, at a reading in Victoria. I told her I was a huge fan.“No way? Thanks, man,” she said. “So you’re a writer?”Miriam Toews was asking about me? I started telling her about some of my work, about how my story “Sea to Sky” was about a father-daughter relationship similar to the one at the center of Kindness, and she murmured appreciatively and said some friendly, encouraging things.“You know, thank you,” she said. “I really needed to hear from a fan today.”She told me that she’d been having some familial trouble, and told me some startlingly personal things about herself. She said she’d been feeling stressed and overwhelmed, but talking to me made her feel like her work was meaningful.“I really appreciate it,” she said.Wow.I had a similar experience years later talking to Michael Christie, author of The Beggar’s Garden. Christie is a former professional skateboarder, and his book had just won the Vancouver Book Award. He had interesting things to say during the interview, but he seemed more interested in chatting with me. He wanted to know about the thesis manuscript I was working on at UBC, and what I thought about the school. We ended up gossiping about teachers and talking about our processes as writers.“I think for me, you know, it was weird to realize writers were real people. That’s why I went to UBC, just so I could see they really exist,” Christie told me.Every new writer I meet expresses the same thing: our profession is so solitary and anti-social, sometimes it feels like we’re writing in a vacuum. And every writer I meet is hungry to meet other writers, and to talk about what it’s like to live this fucking weird life we’ve chosen.Meeting other writers has been the most beneficial thing I’ve done as a writer. Every interview I’ve had has given me new insight, advice and guidance on how to succeed. Basically, I ask them how they did it. And then I try to copy them.For the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with the work of an East Coast writer named Kris Bertin. I interviewed him when he won the Jack Hodgins Founder’s Award at The Malahat Review, and again when his story “Is Alive and Can Move” was published in PRISM International. In a strange twist of fate, I ended up moving into his apartment in Halifax when I moved to the East Coast.Kris showed up the first day I moved in with a twelve-pack of beer, eager to talk. Every time I asked, he gave me back issues of his work in various literary journals like The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence and Pilot. At first I expected him to be cold, or maybe intimidating, but every time I invited him out for beer he showed up. These days we keep up a weekly correspondence and play chess against each other on our phones. I count him as one of my closest friends.Basically, if you want to be a writer, go meet some. I guarantee they’ll be stoked.Will Johnson is a writer, journalist and photographer from Victoria, B.C. He lives with his girlfriend Darby and his budgie Hemingway. Find him here: http://www.goodwilljohnson.com/
