Gary Schanbacher was born in the Midwest, raised in the southeast, came west for graduate school, and never left. He is the author of “Crossing Purgatory” (2013), winner of a SPUR Award from the Western Writers of America, and the Langum Prize in American Historical Fiction, and “Migration Patterns: Stories” (2007), a PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award Runner-up, and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the High Plains First Book Award. He and his wife live in Littleton, Colorado.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Gary Schanbacher: The excerpt contains the first pages of the title story, “The Waterman.” It introduces the character, Clayton Royster, who is featured throughout the linked collection of short stories. The excerpt contains the inciting event that informs stories that follow.
And it establishes setting, the fictional coastal town of Sand Point, Virginia. I’m a fan of writing landscape as character and love stories you could not imagine happening apart from their environment. Kent Haruf’s novels set on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, Laura Pritchett’s northern Colorado novels, and Annie Proulx’s Wyoming stories all come immediately to mind.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
UNDERWRITTEN BY
Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.
Schanbacher: My first book, “Migration Patterns: Stories,” contained a 100-page novella, “The Sea in These Hills.” That novella is set in the 1950s and early ’60s and tells the story of a young Clayton Royster who makes a living fishing in the Atlantic and crabbing in the estuaries around his home in Sand Point.
Over the years I wondered whatever became of that young Clayton. Did he ever marry? Have children? Continue as a waterman? The book grew from those questions. It’s intriguing that we create these fictional characters, drop them off at the end of the story, yet sometimes they hang around in the writer’s memory. “What about us? What’s the rest of our story?”
As I was writing and rewriting various drafts, I wondered about the form — is the book to be a novel or a collection of stories? When do I pick up Clayton’s life and how far do I follow him?
Around the same time, I became interested in the challenge of the linked short story form — Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From The Goon Squad,” Elizabeth Stroud’s “Olive Kitteridge,” and “Olive Again.” I decided to use that format for “The Waterman.” I recast the novella from “Migration Patterns” into the 20-page introductory story and went from there. In “The Waterman,” Clayton ages through the stages of his life from teenager to octogenarian.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter
Schanbacher: First, I was reminded that writing, although immensely gratifying, is difficult, challenging work. In a Paris Review interview years ago, it was suggested to a famous writer that working on his 20th book must be less intimidating than his first, and he responded, “No, no you don’t understand…I’ve never written this book before.”
I was also reminded of what Richard Bausch calls the “mysterious paradox” — that writing gets harder the more practiced you become. I’m sure that’s true with all the arts: you notice the imperfections more acutely; you strive to be better than your last effort.
Finally, I learned that the linked story form has its own unique challenges. In early drafts, my vision was to write a collection of short stories that, read in sequence, contained the narrative arc of a novel. But each story also was to be completely stand-alone, with its own beginning, middle, and end. It took several drafts before I finally conceded that such a layout involved too much repetition — I couldn’t reintroduce characters and setting in each story. So, I had to make some concessions.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Schanbacher: Other than the usual false starts, dead-ends, and countless drafts, the challenge wasn’t so much in the writing as in finding a publisher. The format of the book is not ideal for one of the large publishing houses. It is brief (but not small, I hope) and a hybrid of sorts — Is it a novel? A story collection?
My literary agent at the time liked the book but said she could not sell it. Because I had faith in the work, we agreed to an amicable parting. I was not interested in self-publishing, so I began the search for an independent, traditional outlet. I feel fortunate that the book found a home with a university press, Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
Cornerstone is one of only a handful of “teaching presses,” where, in addition to the management team, it operates with the support of student interns. It was a joy working with young people dedicated to pursuing careers in the field. So, it turned out that the challenge in bringing “The Waterman” to print also provided great satisfaction.
SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Schanbacher: I never consider themes or lessons during the writing of this or any initial draft. In later drafts, themes and emotional patterns do usually bubble to the surface and I’ll look for ways to highlight them.
I think in “The Waterman,” one realization is that most of the characters, like most of us, are neither all good or all bad, but a mix of both at some time or another. Folks are mainly decent people looking to find their place in the universe, and to understand their sometimes complicated connection to one another. We’re all just searching for home.
SunLit: Walk us through your writing process: Where and how do you write?
Schanbacher: Mornings always — after coffee. I have one room in the house dedicated to writing and usually complete a brief session before exercise, a mental processing during exercise, and a session after that lasts until early afternoon. I often begin by reading a bit of poetry just to get a sense of the lyrical and an appreciation of concise, compacted language. I’ll review a few pages of what I’ve written the day before, sometimes revising a sentence or two, and then carry on from there.
“The Waterman”
Where to find it:
- Prospector: Search the combined catalogs of 23 Colorado libraries
- Libby: E-books and audio books
- NewPages Guide: List of Colorado independent bookstores
- Bookshop.org: Searchable database of bookstores nationwide
SunLit present new excerpts from some of the best Colorado authors that not only spin engaging narratives but also illuminate who we are as a community. Read more.
In the evenings, if a project is in full swing, I’ll spend an hour or so editing the morning’s work and setting a path forward for the next day. I try to follow the advice to end a writing session mid-scene or mid-sentence, even if I know what’s to follow, so that in the morning I can pick up where I left off rather than having to begin a new section.
I write slowly and although I don’t write every day, I do think about writing every day. A scene or a story may percolate for weeks or months in my imagination before I begin the actual writing. I know of some writers who have several projects going at once, and I envy them. But, it’s not me.
SunLit: You’ve written a book with a visual setting populated with several memorable characters — are they based on actual places and people or are they purely imaginary?
Schanbacher: A little of both. I have an actual town in mind for the setting but fictionalize it. I don’t usually write about actual places because I’ll inevitably get some detail wrong and lose credibility with the reader —“Wait, there’s only a four-way stop on Main Street, not a stoplight!”
Same with characters. Some are based on actual people but, again, highly fictionalized. The publisher of my first book mentioned he was drawn to the stories because they were clearly fictional rather than disguised memoir. I didn’t know what he meant at the time but think I do now. The characters must be a bit larger than life because their actions and interactions hopefully reveal universal truths larger than themselves.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Schanbacher: It’s kind of an unwritten rule with writers to never attempt resurrecting a failed novel. So, of course, I’m currently trying to resurrect a novel I wrote a few years ago that did not sell. It’s turning into a major rewrite with an updated timeframe and with additional characters. We’ll see.
A few more quick questions
SunLit: Which do you enjoy more as you work on a book – writing or editing?
Schanbacher: I love the writing, but revision and deep editing is where I learn what the story is about, and where the art-making takes place. I spend much more time in revision than I do in writing the first draft.
SunLit: What’s the first piece of writing – at any age – that you remember being proud of?
Schanbacher: As a senior in college, I had a respected professor ask to keep one of my philosophy papers for future reference — what a trip! In terms of writing fiction, years ago I won the Denver Women’s Press Club fiction contest. It was a “blind” reading where judges didn’t know the writer’s name, and when called to inform me I’d won, the judges said they were surprised to learn I was a man — they assumed from the story “voice” that it was written by a woman. I took that as a wonderful compliment.
SunLit: What three writers, from any era, would you invite over for a great discussion about literature and writing?
Schanbacher: Hemingway, because as the writer Tobias Wolff said, “whatever you think of him, the modern short story form is defined as before Hemingway and after Hemingway.” Alice Munro, for basically the same reason. And Dickens, just because.
SunLit: Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
Schanbacher: “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” – Isak Dinesen
SunLit: What does the current collection of books on your home shelves tell visitors about you?
Schanbacher: That I own a lot of bookshelves and that I’m disorganized. Glancing at one shelf in my writing room, I see an Amy Bloom novel next to the “Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg” next to “The Best American Short Stories of 2011”(!) next to the history of the Mayflower. Go figure.
SunLit: Soundtrack or silence? What’s the audio background that helps you write?
Schanbacher: Eclectic music — classical, alt-country, ’60s and ’70s rock, Americana. But once I settle into the writing, it all becomes white noise.
SunLit: What music do you listen to for sheer enjoyment?
Schanbacher: All over the map — Bach, Vivaldi, Springsteen, Prine, Dylan, Iris Dement, Lucinda Williams….
SunLit: What event, and at what age, convinced you that you wanted to be a writer?
Schanbacher: I came to writing late — at around age 40, I felt the urge to balance my work life with a creative side. I’d been stuck on the same three chords on guitar for 20 years and had no mechanical or artistic skill. I began fooling around with words and found it gave me immense pleasure. Shortly thereafter I joined the amazing program at Lighthouse Writers Workshop to build my “writing toolbox.”
SunLit: Greatest writing fear?
Schanbacher: That the ideas dry up.
SunLit: Greatest writing satisfaction?
Schanbacher: It sounds a little corny, but I love it when a sentence or paragraph or scene comes out exactly as I hoped it would — whether that particular piece of writing ever gets published or not.