I met
Craig Lancaster at Book Expo America in New York recently. He is a novelist and essayist who lives in Montana and has worked as a journalist for more than 20 years. His award-winning first novel,
600 Hours of Edward, was published in 2009. His second,
The Summer Son, was published in January 2011.
Q) Craig, thanks for agreeing to answer some questions about your work. You have lived in various locations around the United States but it wasn’t until you moved to Montana that you started writing novels - is there something about the place that unleashed your creativity?I think it's partly the place and partly the time in my life. This is something I'd always wanted to do, but in my twenties and thirties, it seems like other concerns -- building a career, etc. -- got in the way of it. In 2008, a couple of years after I moved to Montana to be with the woman who became my wife, I had a terrible motorcycle accident, one I was lucky to have survived. In the aftermath of that, I started paying better attention to my aspirations (and to road safety, but that probably goes without saying).
As for Montana, I can say only this: It's the land I dreamed about living in when I was a child. Now, there were a lot of romantic notions tied up in that ideal, but the truth is, I've never felt more at home than I do here. I came here at a time when I'd assumed that it wasn't going to happen, that the circumstances of my life had led me down another path. In that way, it feels like a gift to be here.
Q) Can you tell me a bit about what inspired you to write 600 Hours of Edward?In the aftermath of my motorcycle wrec
k, I spent about a month just living in a recliner. I couldn't lay down because of all the broken ribs. Toward the end of my recuperation, a friend asked me if I'd like to try National Novel Writing Month with him. At first, I declined; it had been a bad year, and I didn't want to make it worse by dropping a lot of failed prose out there. But then I started thinking about a man who lives his life in precise patterns, never deviating, and the dramatic (and comic) possibilities that awaited if I got in there and started throwing obstacles at him. By the end of National Novel Writing Month, I had the 80,000 words that, eventually, became the book.
Q) What about The Summer Son?I started writing it in April 2009, when the book that b
ecame "Edward" was still a self-pubbed title. ("Edward" was picked up by Riverbend Publishing, a small house here in Montana, in October 2009 and went on to be a Montana Honor Book and a High Plains Book Award winner.) I'd been thinking a lot about fathers and sons and how that relationship, if it's fouled up in the beginning, can skid sideways for decades, affecting everybody in its sphere.
It was a difficult book to write, not least of all because it's intensely personal for me. But it was also hard to find the story. Where "Edward" was written in a 24-day burst of creative energy, I needed most of a year to get "The Summer Son" where I wanted it to be. I'm really, really proud of it.
Q) Do you think your training as a journalist helped you when you were writing your books?In two profound senses, yes. First, I know how to put my shoulder into the plow and do the work. You won't be much of a journalist if you can't get to work, regardless of how you feel or whether the words aren't coming easily. Second, to whatever extent my prose is spare and direct, that's the influence of a journalism background. I move from Point A to Point B in a straight line. That has the nice side benefit of keeping a story moving right along.
Q) You have a fun exercise called The Word on your blog where each week you ask Facebook friends to suggest a word, then you choose one of those words at random and use it as inspiration to write a short story. Can you tell me something about the background to that – why did you decide to do it? Does it help your writing?I decided to do it because I saw it done on
Janet Fitch's blog. She's smarter than I am; she does it only every couple of weeks, not week in and week out the way I do. But, yeah, I think it's definitely helped me. It keeps my mind limber, and the tossed-off nature of it -- most of the stories are in the 1,000-word range, and I generally take no more than an hour to write them -- helps remind me that some of my best work comes when I just let it rip. (On the flip side of that, I also see some of my best work in the revision stage. God, I love to rewrite.)
Q) You write short stories, essays and novels – is there any particular form that you enjoy more than the others or that comes most easily to you?They all have their distinctive rewards and maddening moments. When I hook a good idea for a short story, I love that I can get a first draft pounded out in a few days, as opposed to the weeks and months associated with a novel. The essays are very occasional; luckily, I've cultivated some relationships with publications that allow me an outlet for those thoughts when I have them, and the comfort is that it's the work that bears the most resemblance to journalism.
For a sense of accomplishment, though, nothing beats finishing a novel. There are so many things that can go wrong, so many junctures at which the whole enterprise can sink, that actually making it to the end is something worth celebrating. And I always do.
Q) What’s next for you – are you working on another book?I just turned in a collection of short stories to my editor. Waiting for word on that. And, yes, I'm hard at work on what I hope will be the next novel. It's too early in the game to say much about that, but maybe you'll have me back when/if it comes to fruition.
Q) Where can we find you online e.g. Twitter, Facebook, a blog, etc?My main site,
www.craig-lancaster.com, is updated every day, Monday through Friday.
On Twitter, I'm at
twitter.com/amindadrift, although I must say that I'm still trying to figure out that world.
I'm a Facebook fiend, though. I have
an author page, and if you're interested in Craig Lancaster Unfiltered (fair warning: It's not for everybody), hit me up at
www.facebook.com/craig.lancaster.
Thank you - and yes, I'd love to know more about the next novel when it comes to fruition. Good luck with it. I'm reading The Summer Son now and I'm really enjoying it.
Alison Wonderland will be published on 16th August:
