Survivors Of The Hive

Kingston poet Jason Heroux talks to Lucy Black about his debut collection of stories.

Lucy Black (LB): Congratulations on the release of your short story collection.  The pieces crackle with wordplay and your skills as a wordsmith are so evident.  Please comment upon the playfulness of your use of language in these stories and how it is you shape your narratives using this deliberate approach. 

Jason Heroux (JH): Thanks for noticing the playfulness of the language. When I approach a writing project I try to stay in the moment and open to all possibilities. I don’t outline or storyboard in the beginning. The structure and framework come at a later stage after I realize what sort of material I’m working with. For this particular project, I was inspired to explore the “constant flight forward” writing method of the Argentinian writer Cesar Aira, inviting randomness and chance into the composition. For the first draft essentially I just kept writing and didn’t look back. Revisions and changes occurred in subsequent drafts, but the first draft was full of happy accidents. Accident is an interesting word. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means “an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause.” But it also means “an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.” Fascinating. Why is chance considered harmful? Why are we injured by the unintentional? Anyway, the risk was that I could have ended up with something no one wanted to publish, but because I was having so much fun I didn’t mind.

LB: You are an accomplished poet as well as a writer of fiction.  Please share with us the process you use, or the choices you make, about the genre you employ when you begin to write something new.  

JH: I try not to think of genre when I start a new project. Instead, I picture every piece as “a new project” which gives me the freedom to follow the material wherever it goes. I’m not a big fan of genres, to be honest. I enjoy reading hybrid books that mix things up. Even the difference between novels and novellas is something I don’t see much rationale for. For some reason, we differentiate novellas that are 10,000 – 30,000 words from novels that are longer, but we don’t differentiate 30,000-word novels from 80,000-word novels. I like to treat books the same as people. Some of us are shorter or longer than others, but in the end, we’re all called “people.” Regarding my process when I begin something new, I once described it to a friend as the following: it starts with a spark (a scene, a concept, an image), then I add some kindling (other scenes, other images, dialogue, characters) to keep the blaze going until the fire dies, and then attach the ashes to an email and submit to a publisher. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but it captures the spirit of my approach to both poetry and fiction.

LB: The stories in Survivors of the Hive each begin with an interesting premise (i.e., the sound of silence).  Although the tales are quirky and a little mind-bending, they are also thought-provoking and deal with legitimate questions.  How would you characterize the driving force behind this body of work?

The driving force. I like that. We’re so often confused these days, as individuals, and as a culture, and that sense of bewilderment and bafflement is difficult for us to embrace. We constantly search for meaning, even when it’s not there. I’ve heard from several readers they were left with “so much to think about” after reading these stories. I couldn’t ask for a better reaction than that. We frequently turn to writing for answers, but the writing I love most encourages a sense of wonder. Not every question needs an answer, some answers have no questions, and everything in life changes every day anyway. These stories present how difficult it can be to find meaning, and how challenging it is for us to finally “make sense” of things. I think the driving force behind the book is how a search for harmony, instead of meaning, might be the more rewarding pursuit. We’re all a bunch of squeaky clarinets in the cosmic symphony, and that’s okay. We can make mistakes, and lose our place, and play the wrong notes. We’re still part of some bigger orchestra, and the music around us is magnificent.

LB: In what way is this finished book significantly different from the first draft?

JH: There are 2 ways that this book differed significantly from the first draft. The first is due to the fact that it was originally just a single novella consisting of the longest piece, “The Last Poetry Contest.” The book’s editor, a brilliant writer named Paul Carlucci, saw a potential benefit in expanding the manuscript into a short story collection and asked if I had any short stories kicking around that could be included. I didn’t have any short stories available, but I did have three unfinished “novel ideas” on the go, all at various stages of development, so I worked those projects into short stories and we added them in. Once all the pieces were in place the manuscript began to have a real conversation with itself, with themes, images, and concepts reflecting and echoing each other, which never would have happened with the novella alone.

            The other significant difference from the first draft to the finished product is that the original draft was much more absurd and bizarre, like a wild rollercoaster ride that went off the rails. The finished book balances the absurdity with more context and balance so that it still seems dream-like without feeling cartoonish.

LB: What is the biggest challenge or hurdle you have had to work through as a writer?

I began writing as a poet, and often approach prose in a poetic way, which means there’s usually a lot of ambiguity in my narratives and not much closure. When you read a poem about a red wheelbarrow, a reader doesn’t usually wonder: where did that red wheelbarrow come from, and where is it now? But with narrative prose, involving concatenations and characters, context plays a different role, and the background often shapes what’s on stage. I’ll give you an example. In one of the stories, a waitress appears from time to time, bringing food and clearing away dishes. From a poetic viewpoint, the waitress was an amorphous part of the atmosphere. But from a narrative perspective, my editor Paul asked me a very simple question: who is she, what’s her story? That was, for me, a groundbreaking question. It’s something I’ll spend my life wondering about, carrying forward to future writing projects. I mentioned earlier that a project begins with a spark, and ends with ashes. The challenge I continue to work through is: what were these characters doing before the spark, and where are they now, after the ashes?

LB: Share with us your driving force.  What is that special energy that encourages you to be a writer?

JH: The world is a confusing place, and we tend to minimize and mitigate that confusion in order to get through the day. Literature, and art in general, presents a safe place for us to sit with our bewilderment, and learn from it. That’s the gift of surrealism. It wouldn’t take long to catalogue the many horrors that have taken place under the guidance of common sense. Part of what energizes me as a writer is to join things that aren’t generally connected, and to suggest that perhaps they are connected more than we realize. That’s essentially what a metaphor does: it states that one thing is another thing. My driving force is a move toward reconciliation of opposing elements: sound vs silence, extermination vs preservation, past vs future, denial vs acceptance. Replacing versus with a sense of union. Finding harmony in discord. It’s a transformative experience, not just as a writer, but as a person. What I love most about writing is that it often gives me a fresh perspective. And seeing things in a different way allows me to think about things in a different way. And once we think about things in a different way anything is possible.

LB: What is the most valuable piece of writing advice you have ever been given? 

I’ve been blessed over the years, learning from many mentors younger and older than myself. But there’s a single bit of creative advice that I keep pinned to my bulletin board and still re-read each day. It’s from a letter by Van Gogh to the painter Anthon Gerard Alexander van Rappard, written November 21, 1881.

            “There is no help for it, everyone has to go through a period of worrying and fumbling after he has risked himself on the open sea. At first, we catch little or no fish, but we get acquainted with our course and learn to steer our little vessel, and this is indispensable to begin with. And after a while, we shall catch a lot of fish, and big ones too, be sure of that!”

            I’ve learned so much over the years from those three sentences. Above all, it teaches me that “fumbling” is part of learning, the value of studying our inner selves as we grow “acquainted with our course” and the benefit of being familiar with the tools of writing as we “steer our little vessel.” Most importantly, it continues to give me the endless gift of encouragement, cheer, and hope. 

LB: During the course of this writing project, were any of your beliefs or perspectives challenged or stretched?  If so, please explain.

JH: With every writing project I embark on my beliefs and perspectives tend to get stretched and expanded. For this book, two things come to mind.

First of all, I utilized multiple POVs in the story “Tango Zero Hour” which challenged my perspective on a narrative level. I tried to treat the characters as separate threads woven into a single tapestry, each one distinct and different from the others, but all of them contributing together toward the story’s fabric. I’d never done that before. 

Secondly, on a personal level, I felt I grew a lot during this project, as a writer and a person. For years I saw mystery as something vague, shadowy, nebulous. But working on this book I learned that precision and accuracy, in language, thought, and feeling, also help to reveal and deepen the mysteries of the world we live in. Everything appears hidden and unknowable in a fog, but after the fog clears, the things that remain hidden and unknowable in the clear light of day under the sun suggest the truest mysteries of all. I’m not sure why it took me so long to learn that, but I’m glad I know it now.

LB: Were you surprised by anything in particular as you were working through the various edits of the manuscript?

JH: What surprised me while working through the various edits of the manuscript was how prevalent the theme of grief became. In the early versions of the stories, characters were acting strangely, and at first, I didn’t question why. I simply thought here are a bunch of odd people going through a weird period in their life. But I was encouraged by the book’s editor Paul to explore why some of these characters were acting so strange. And through that exploration, studying the situations the characters found themselves in, and taking a closer look at the way they acted and reacted in those situations, the theme of grief rose to the surface. It was always there but hidden behind a fog. I suppose it ties into what I said earlier about how precision and accuracy often contribute to a deeper reflection of mystery. As the edits continued, things became clearer, and the mysteries deepened. It was no longer about why these particular characters were acting so strange, but about how we, as people in general, often go through such a personal process in order to come to terms with losing a loved one.

LB: Do you have a system for organizing your thoughts and notes when you write?  Please explain.

JH: I love using physical notebooks, the kind you can pick up at any dollar store, and I’ll usually buy a 200-page one, and fill it up with scenes and fragments, a little bit each day, whatever comes to mind. When I reach the last page I’ll pause and review things, see what jumps out at me, and find a few threads that might perhaps lead to something more. It’s somewhat of a haphazard approach, more shambolic than systematic, but I find it gives me the freedom to explore. I’m more of a forager than a gardener. Every book is a meal, and before you cook you need ingredients. The notebook is like my grocery basket, full of whatever provisions and perishables I happen to come across. A conversation with my father about the weather. A scene in a thrift shop. An image of someone peeling an orange that never ends. A cryptic message on an answering machine. A barefoot character carrying his shoes on the bus. When my notebook basket is full I look inside and think, “I wonder what I can make with all this.”