Vancouver based writer Gail Kirkpatrick talks to AW’s Lucy Black about her debut novel.
LB: Congratulations on having written such a beautiful book. I found your use of description and language mesmerizing. Would you be able to share with our readers how you came to write such a polished text? Was this the work of many drafts and edits or are you one of those rare writers gifted with the natural ability to write prose with such poetic qualities?
GK: Thank you for your generous and kind words. Who doesn’t wish they were, what you have referred to as ‘one those rare writers gifted with the natural ability to write prose with such poetic qualities.’ I am a very slow writer and reader. I read far fewer books a year than most avid readers, and I seem to write the same way. This work was many drafts and many edits. I don’t write with the story pouring out in its entirety in a first draft. At the start, every day I reread and rewrite from the very beginning of the work until well into the story. I seem to be able to move forward easier if I am more satisfied with the beginning. A different tense might be better, is the coat green or yellow, what is the protagonist doing/wanting, has anyone or anything else entered the landscape in the last 24 hours. As I move ahead in the work, I rewrite the previous day’s work before moving on. I try to fuss less over every word, because I know there will be another draft to refine, and I need to get on with where the story wants to go. In the subsequent drafts and edits, I look for opportunities for organic poetic images, allusions, metaphor, repeated words or phrases, and really get into polishing. I suppose I prefer rewriting to initial drafting.
LB: There are several storylines in your book, all beautifully nuanced and tied together. The importance of trains, however, and the revival of a train line is central. Please share with us the importance of trains to the book and how it is you became so knowledgeable about them.
GK: Regarding the several storylines coming together, the train theme and how I came to be somewhat knowledgeable about them. This work began in landscape. An image of a grieving woman looking down a railway track. The story expanded with obstacles presenting themselves out of that grief. As the executor of her sister’s estate, Margaret could have been presented with any number of over-whelming requests in her sister’s will. How did I choose the revival of a train line?
I spent my early childhood in railway stations, and I remembered some of the day-to-day routine. I had written a creative non-fiction piece for the literary magazine ‘The Windsor Review’ about a station agent caring for the village’s outdoor skating rink. I felt there was more to be gleaned from that piece. When I started my MA at Lancaster in the UK, I was drawn to the parallel histories of British and Canadian rail. I read a number of books about stations, rail abandonment, rebuilding of abandoned railways, tracks that were now walking trails. I spent a lot of time watching Canadian National Film Board (CNFB/NFB) and British Film Institute (BFI) historical film footage, visiting train museums, and talking to former railway workers. While I want that the fact and folklore to contribute to the storyline, they are meant after all to serve the fiction.
LB: One of the things that most impressed me in this book is what I describe as “elegant restraint.” You suggest many things (i.e., a failing marriage) without detracting from the heart of the story by providing exhausting detail. Please share something about your writing priorities when working on this novel.
GK: Thank you for the deep read and catching my intent with respect to ‘restraint.’ I am drawn to writing that gives the reader space. While the author should know the detailed backstory, I am not a fan of reading or writing out all the minutia, or as you say every ‘exhausting detail.’ Margaret’s marriage may be failing, she is living with grief, she is unconnected to landscape, but I hope I have written just enough for the reader to bring their own imagination to the read. My goal was to go beyond the obvious and explore the ‘what now.’ What happens after Margaret is cried out, when her best friend is not who she thought she was? Is there a price to pay for loyalty? While I love sumptuous details in some books, I chose to be very selective for Sleepers and Ties. In editing, I tried to be mindful of flashbacks, which to me can sometimes turn into the acting equivalent when someone on stage breaks the fourth wall, steps out and explains backstory to the audience. I chose not to show what Margaret looked like when she was crying all night over the death of her sister. Readers are smart; they bring their own experiences to books; they can read into passages.
LB: Tell us about the book you have returned to over the years and read more than once.
GK: I am so happy you asked this question. The book that I have returned to over the years is Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. I love this book. I’ve read it at different ages and stages of my life. It always feels new to me, and I learn something from the writing each time. Stegner was born in Iowa and grew up in many places including Eastend, Saskatchewan. He wrote about his time there in his autobiography Wolf Willow. He won the Pulitzer for his Angle of Repose. Crossing to Safety is a rewarding read. For writers, there are so many examples of character and story development through time lines, in details that are not weighty. His use of allusion is organic and doesn’t show off. The transitions are seamless. Stegner evokes emotion in his succinct prose and in his descriptions of landscape, and lives lived. Details are sensual and thought-provoking. The love and conflicts shared between four friends and between the couples is real, emotional, and profound. I went back and looked at my dog-eared copy and was surprised and proud of the margin comments by my younger self. Stegner’s is the kind of writing I aspire to.
LB: If you could spend a full day with a famous writer or a famous character, who would it be and why?
GK: I was lucky to be able to visit William Wordsworth’s home, Dove Cottage, in the Lake District in England several years ago and see where he wrote and the places he walked. I suppose I would like to go on one of his pre-dinner walks, come up on that ‘crowd’ or ‘host, of golden daffodils’ with him and then stand over his shoulder as he scribbled and scratched and wrote the ultimate words for, ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ or ‘My Heart Leaps Up.’ Of course, Dorothy and Mary, his sister and wife were there making sure he and Coleridge were fed and warm. But that’s another discussion. I have also dipped my feet in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond and visited his writing cabin. Both writers lived close to nature, not just in proximity but in their very being, and they were able to elevate their interaction with and appreciation of nature from mere description or a recounting to convey a spiritual experience of their natural world. Thoreau bathed in Walden Pond every morning when he lived in his cabin. In Sleepers and Ties, I send Margaret back into the lake. She was reluctant, but I convinced her.
LB: What is the biggest challenge or hurdle you have had to work through as a writer?
GK: Once I am in my space and my hands hit the keyboard, I can stay writing for hours. For me the biggest hurdle is getting into that chair. I happen to have some very time-consuming other loves and creative endeavors. I have a large garden and enjoy playing in the dirt as much as writing. I try to write mostly in the fall and winter months, because I know that come March there will be raspberry and blueberry bushes to prune, flower beds to clean up, and compost to empty. I’d rather be outdoors. I’m not immune though to having words and ideas come to me and so a notebook is not very far away. I am also a hiker and ocean swimmer, and love being on a movie set. I’ve been a background actor for over 20 years. These feed my soul. For many years I kept a blog on my observations of my time in the forest. Six hours gardening, or on a movie set, hiking or heading out to my swimming hole, I believe it all feeds into the work eventually and there are days when deadlines take precedence.
LB: Please share with us a little about your research and pre-writing process.
GK: I don’t do a lot of pre-writing. If snippets of potential conversation or descriptions come to me out of context, I write them in a note-book. If I have been looking at any particular books on a subject, I use Post-it notes with a comment on how an image or information might be useful. I love researching and learning. That could be why I end up writing slowly too J When it came to the scenes at the lake, I really had to go to sites and books on birds, nest-building, migrations, climate effects on populations, local environmental protections and strategies, experts in particular locales. I’d be listening to a particular bird sound and then I’d be asking: what time of day do birds sing? How do birders understand what the song means? Friends told me about their grieving process and about being executors; everyone had a different story to tell. I write comments in the margins to come back to in editing, and note any URL for fact-checking purposes. When I was at university a site called Zotero was a good way to organize topics. It can tag citations and sites, for quick retrieval.
LB: Please tell us a little about the writing spaces or environments that work best for you. Are there any particular items that you like to have in place?
GK: Stephen King says in his book On Writing something about getting rid of the world to create your own worlds. My space needs to be that way. I can’t write in coffee shops, or with music, or any background noise. I sometimes find I’m even sensitive to other’s energy. It’s just me and hubby in the house now, and he writes at the university café. I used to write when everyone else had gone to bed. I have a big oak desk I bought at a government surplus for twenty dollars. The desk has a lower shelf for a keyboard–I splurged on an ergonomic chair. Between book ends are an Oxford Dictionary and the little, brOwn handbook, and several Moleskines (notebooks.) An ancient fluorescent lamp lights the way. On one side of the desk are the pages that I’m editing and on the other side a vase of garden flowers, another shorter vase filled with pencils, and a thermos of tea. My writing space is not quite a ’room of my own.’ It saves items our children haven’t taken away with them, but I can shut the door so the room can contain the world I am building.
LB: How was the title chosen for this book? Who had input and what were the deciding factors?
GK: Sleepers and Ties was not the original title. The working title for the longest time came from a song and I knew exactly what I meant by the title. Many disagreed. My university classmates said the title evoked images of a 19th century woman in a puffy dress. Did the title reflect the content? Was there a deeper meaning? A wonderful editor I worked with, David Llewelyn, just told me to, ‘think about it.’ The new title evolved organically from the book’s elements. I won’t tell you what the original title was because I think that may taint your relating to the title Sleepers and Ties. What I will say is that the second title was Ties and Sleepers. I try to be sensitive to the number of words in a sentence, the number of consonants and vowels, the rhythm of how words feel when they are read aloud. With the input of one of my early readers turning the words around to Sleepers and Ties gave it more nuance. Sleepers is the British term for what we know as railway ties. Of course, for Margaret, sleepers and ties aren’t just about the railway terms.
LB: In what way is this finished book significantly different from the first draft?
GK: In the first draft I was working on at university with my mentor, the manuscript contained two parallel narratives. I was exploring memory and how memories converge or differ, and how in hindsight they vary with each person’s experience. One narrative was written in first-person present tense, and the other in third-person past tense. The voices and tones were quite different. One slightly more objective and the other camera close up to the action. I was also playing with structure in the novel and enjoying trying to work it all out so that both stories came together in the end. In the editing, it all began to feel a bit cumbersome, and I wanted a more straight forward through line. One narrative had to go or rather be somewhat incorporated into the other in a linear time line. Who knows, it could have worked. I’ve often put aside books that experiment with form and draw me too far out of the read. Although, I really admired Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad and her delivery of this novel in its varied ways.
Gail Kirkpatrick completed her MA at Lancaster in the UK, and her undergrad in writing at UVic. At Lancaster, she explored the aspects of memory and the parallel train history and folklore of Great Britain and Canada, the way travel posters enticed travel, Queen Victoria’s trips to the seaside, and Charles Dickens’s train trips in America. She took inspiration for her manuscript from the communities and lives that were changed because of the rail closures in Great Britain and Canada. Her writing has been published in various literary and trade magazines. Sleepers and Ties is her first novel.