Q: Can you elaborate on your writing process? In what way was it influenced by writing a travel memoir?
A: Well, let me preface my reply by stating that, as a writer, I tend to exhibit "perfectionist" tendencies, with all the trouble perfectionism entails. I have great difficulty silencing the voice of my internal critic, who more often than not mocks my efforts at sentence craft with great disparagement. Imagine the most unsympathetic teacher from your school years staring over your shoulder as you struggle with a homework problem. This dynamic describes my relationship with my internal critic. The act of completing a page of handwritten scrawl represents for me the end stage of a great mental struggle, in which I question everything from diction and syntax to thematic purpose. The exercises that creative writers often employ to unshackle the creative process--free association, brainstorming, writing without pause--typically don't work for me. The ability to throw words on a page like paint on a canvas, out of a playful curiosity to see what finally sticks or what patterns emerge, seems to me a great enigma. I envy the playfulness, the faith in the subconscious, yet doubt the effectiveness of the approach. Of course writers who employ such methods would point to James Joyce's Ulysses, with its long sections of stream-of-consciousness narrative, as an example of the great literature that can arise from unshackled creativity. As a counterpoint, I would simply mention that Joyce had already achieved success via traditional narrative before attempting experimental forms.
I don't wish to portray my entire process as labor intensive. The stereotype of the writer surrounded by a roomful of wadded-up paper, the detritus of failed drafts thrown out in frustration, doesn't apply to me. About 50%-75% of what I write as a first draft survives in second and third draft form. Moreover, I find the revision process an enjoyable undertaking. The antagonism that prevails between me and my internal critic transforms, during revision, into a symbiotic and uplifting team effort. It's as if the critic, finally invited to the party, wants to pour a drink and join the conversation, rather than reject the idea of conversations with nihilistic contempt.
Interestingly, until I undertook a book length work, I lacked full appreciation for the dominant role that revision plays in what emerges as a finished product. Prior to Islands on the Fringe, my longest completed work was my graduate thesis, which weighs in at about 120 double-spaced pages. Though carefully edited, the document didn't undergo significant revision. The unyielding deadlines of the academic calendar meant I had about five months to complete the project, a time frame too limited for the creative re-seeing that true revision entails. Moreover, the need to adhere to academic conventions of tone, style, and format meant I had to restrain my creativity within narrow parameters. No such constraints limited the writing of Islands on the Fringe, and over the years the project developed, I experienced a shift in perception that influenced not only my narrative aesthetic but also my understanding of the experience I sought to recollect. Specifically, I began to see the story not as the recollection of a traveler who made a journey, but rather vignettes in the life of a traveler to whom a journey happened. The distinction my seem subtle, but over the course of eleven chapters it had a significant thematic influence.
In his intriguing memoir of the writer's life, The Summing Up, W. Somerset Maugham contends that "every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. . .he does well only to work to liberate his spirit of a subject that he has so long meditated that it burdens him." Though I hesitate to apply the word "art" to my work, Islands on the Fringe brought some closure to a chapter in my life that long haunted me. The notes, letters, diary entries, and photographs on which I scaffolded the book had for years sounded a nostalgic echo in my mind. Writing the book helped me place that nostalgia in context and channel it to productive purpose. Every time I sat down to write, that channeling guided my pen. I knew that until I finished the project, the nostalgic echo of my scrapbook would continue to distract me. Happily, the process of writing Islands on the Fringe brought me some measure of peace and gave me the inspiration to pursue travel writing as an active literary endeavor.
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