Robert
Pope’s fiction first appeared in Dark Lane Anthology Volume Three. Since then he’s made regular appearances in
subsequent volumes.
Q:
What are your working methods? Do you
sit down every day to write? Do you have
a designated place to write?
A:
I sit down everyday and give attention to writing, but I don’t write every day
unless I have a story in the works. Then I sit down a couple of times each day
to do as much as I can. As it has been too cold to work in my attic this
winter, I write in a large leather chair in the living room, with the laptop on
my lap—early in the morning. I often come down to Nervous Dog coffee shop when
I find it tempting to play with the dog or daydream. At the coffee shop I sit
in a stiff-backed chair, so I will not get too comfortable. People talking or
working around me gives me the sense I’m getting somewhere.
Q:
Tell us about one of your favourite short stories and why you like it (not one
of your own).
A:
At the time I read “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol, I might have been twenty, but the
experience of wonder and delight at the purposeful wackiness of the story gave
me a bit of a thrill. Since then, there have been many highlights, and often
the stories share this quality of purposeful wackiness as well as intensity in
forward motion. The sense of wonder found in strange situations and comedy in
tragic moments satisfies the mourner and the fool in me.
Q:
Tell us about one of your favourite short stories (written by you).
A:
In recent years, my favourite stories appeared in Dark Lane, “The Detective’s Son” and “The Rose Is Red the Grass Is
Green.” Both had qualities I want to balance: a developed, dense sense of both the
realistic and imaginative levels. “The Detective’s Son” was an apotheosis of
what I most desired to achieve at the time, but “The Rose Is Red…” had a more
complex development. I wrote the sections from varying viewpoints, as they
occurred to me. In rewriting, I chose the dominant point-of-view, Farrell
Flynn, a lawyer running for political office, and each section fell in place
naturally. I ended up with a file of pieces that didn’t make it but have not
looked back at them with remorse. Writing it did exhaust me, I will admit.
Perhaps because I had to put in more time and effort, I have to like it best,
for the same reason that troublesome children are so often most loved by their
parents.
Q:
Where do your ideas come from? Do you go
looking for ideas – for example by brainstorming, or do you wait for
inspiration?
A:
I do what every reasonable writer says you should not: wait for inspiration.
Once I finish a story, I have a couple of days of ecstasy that slowly evolve
into desperation. But I always trust another story will present itself to my
imagination, and I have to be ready. I have to recognize it as a story worth
developing, and it has to take root firmly for me to stick with it. Of course,
everything you do, hear, read, seek, dream comes into the formation of the
idea, but all bets are off once you wade into it. I might actually have
thoughts such as, wouldn’t it be nice to write something that did
such-and-such, but conscious desires of this nature must be blended in with an
idea that comes with sufficient force to demand attention. Eventually, your
unconscious mind will come to the idea your conscious mind suggested at the
point at which the unconscious mind believes he or she came up with it on its
own. Never contradict the unconscious mind, for she or he is the source of all
good things. I suppose I am a bit of a Jungian, but only because my unconscious
thinks he or she invented it.
Q: Are you a full-time author? If
you have another job, what is it and would you like to become a full-time
author if you could?
A: I write full time now and would
like to be a full-time author if I could. Yes. Teaching has supported my vice
throughout the years. I just got a letter (meaning a long email) from a former
student and present friend who asked me why I continue to write when I do not
have to do so any longer. My first response is best represented by three large
question marks appearing over my head. Evidently, when she took my fiction
writing class, she thought I was kidding. I write stories. This is what I do.
Q: What is the most difficult part
of your writing process?
A: The most difficult part of the
writing process is a triumvirate: waiting, writing, and obstacles. In the space
between writing one story and starting another, I often question myself most
severely. In the writing, I usually take
Advil at least once a day because my back or neck hurts. In the living of any
life at all, there are situations that demand attention if you hope to be a
decent, law-abiding citizen. If you are neither decent nor law-abiding, you
don’t have time for writing stories.
Q: If you could go back in time,
what would you say to your younger self about becoming an author?
A:
If I could go back in time, and if I could find myself again, I would nod to my
younger self in passing, and I would smile and point at him. That would give
him enough to think about for years.
