Will Ferguson tries to write the perfect book, over and over again
Ryan B. Patrick | | Posted: May 31, 2021 5:48 PM | Last Updated: May 31, 2021
'I want to write complex and challenging books that take readers on a really wild journey'
Will Ferguson has written humour, travel books and fiction. The Calgary-based writer won the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his thriller 419. He has won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour three times: for his novel Generica (now titled Happiness), his Canadian travel book Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw and his travel memoir Beyond Belfast.
Ferguson's latest is The Finder, an adventure novel about finding things that are lost in the world. The story takes readers to Japan, Australia and New Zealand as Interpol agent Gaddy Rhodes, photographer Tamsin Greene and travel writer Thomas Rafferty unexpectedly cross paths as they track "The Finder" — a mysterious figure who believes they can find history's lost objects, such as the missing Romanov Fabergé eggs and Muhammad Ali's Olympic gold medal.
You've won a Giller Prize and a host of other literary awards. How does winning feel as an author?
It's always nice to have an award. It would be strange to say it isn't. But I think you write what you want to write and the awards follow or they don't.
I don't think it bears on your writing or your approach — you certainly don't write toward an award. I've been once or twice on juries and I know how crazy and chaotic it is. There is always an element of a crapshoot in any award. So I know that. I think you just write without thinking about that.
Writing a book is like throwing a message in a bottle and you don't know who is reading it.
It's wonderful to be nominated because writing a book is like throwing a message in a bottle and you don't know who is reading it. And it just goes out there into the world.
The satirical novel Generica (now titled Happiness) came out way back in 2001. Do you look back at your old work in terms of what you could have done differently or done better?
I'm always thinking about the current project — and the next project. I started out with travel writing. As a travel writer, you always look at the next destination. You're orientated that way.
I don't think of it as a body of work. I certainly don't dwell on what I've written. Every now and then, younger writers ask me about writer's block and how to to avoid it. The only advice I give is that the book in your mind, the book that you intend to write, is always much, much better than the book you write.
As soon as you start putting it down in words, it's imperfect. It's not great. It's not as good as it could have been or you thought it should have been. The book in your mind is better than the book that you write, in every conceivable way except one — it doesn't exist.
Whatever you write, however flawed it is, however lacking in perfection, it's still better than an imaginary book. It's still better to have written it. That's how I look at it.
That's a good way to look at it.
The Shoe on the Roof is about three mental patients who believe they're Jesus and are brought together to try to cure themselves.
My mom was a psychiatric nurse at the Weyburn Hospital in Saskatchewan. She told me all these really rich stories — very tragic, very poignant and very funny stories — about trying to work in a psych ward in the 1950s. She would eventually burn out and leave.
But I thought if I can capture that — and of course I couldn't — at least it's now on the page. At least that book was written.
Speaking of travel writing, is it as glamorous as people think? Is it a grind? What's your take, having done it for almost a quarter century?
The world of travel writing is very strange, especially with COVID happening now. I generally travel by myself. I'd get a newspaper or magazine assignment or I would go off and write a book. I try to write travel memoirs as opposed to travel guide books.
The guide book I wrote was a budget guide to Japan. It was called The Hitchhiker's Guide to Japan. It's out of print. You can still find it, I think probably online. But on one of the pages, I sent people into the ocean, so that's how I know I shouldn't be the guide book reader! I don't have the right type of brain for it. You have to be very obsessive on details and meticulous and have a good sense of direction. I have none of those.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have travel memoirs, which are very subjective in their narrative. They're not very useful as far as planning a trip. In the middle, you have a magazine and sometimes newspaper essays. Every now and then, tourism departments will put together a junket and bring together a bunch of different travel writers from different countries to a destination, hoping that you'll write something good about it.
You have to be very obsessive on details and meticulous and have a good sense of direction. And I have none of those.
I've done a couple of those and they were hilarious and funny because you are with other weird travel writers. It's a very strange subculture because they're almost pathologically restless and they often have very, very shallow roots wherever they live.
But I certainly have a lot of affection and nostalgia for travel writing.
When you are writing different genres, what's the approach?
You do use different parts of your brain. You are using different muscles. Not to be too esoteric, but my older sister, Gena Ferguson, is a very talented sculptor. She loves working with marble: she would buy flawed marble because it was cheaper, and then she would carve around the flaws.
I see writing fiction or nonfiction as two types of sculpting. With marble, you have a big block of all this material and then you have to slowly cut away everything you don't need to make your sculpture. That's what travel writing is like: it's the art of selection. You and I could go on the same trip. We could take the same train through northern China. We could do that same trip and we would write two totally different books.
I see writing fiction or nonfiction as two types of sculpting.
But fiction is like working with the clay. You'll take an idea or a quirk or an image character and then you build it up — you keep adding and adding with words. Fiction is the art of additions and travel writing is the art of subtraction. That's how I think of it.
How did The Finder come to be?
As a writer, you never know where your idea comes from. Often, it'll percolate at the back of your mind for years; you're not even aware of it. When I created this character who finds all these lost things, and he even calls himself "the king of forgotten and lost objects," I thought the idea had come out of reading articles about lost objects. But as I was writing the book, as I finished the first draft, I realized that in 1988, when I was studying film in Toronto and was a broke university student, I couldn't afford a gift for my niece, Barbara Joy. So I wrote this children's book for her.
As a writer, you never know where your idea comes from.
One of the characters in the children's book is called The King of Forgotten Things. He has a giant list of everything that people lose buttons and pens, hats and sunglasses and paper clips that he had and keeps them all.
He has this giant kingdom of lost objects. And when I realized I was like, "Oh, my God, that was in 1988, that character, that idea." Clearly, there's a connection I hadn't even realized.
What did you want to accomplish with The Finder?
I want to write complex and challenging books that take readers on a really wild journey. I like the effect of being on a log ride at the amusement park — I'm always trying to write and capture that feeling. I've noticed a trend lately with fiction where it's becoming so stripped down and the language is becoming very sparse. Often, novels read like novellas, just really one idea, one story and very Hemingway-esque.
I'm not a fan of Hemingway. I always think of his books read like a plan for a story. They read like something that's going to become a story once you put in the language and the nuance and more complexities to it. I love Dickens and Dostoevsky. I'm not putting myself in this category at all, but I miss this big kind of epic, interwoven novels, multiple characters over multiple storylines.
I like the effect of being on a log ride at the amusement park — so I'm always trying to write and capture that feeling.
I've always admired Graham Greene. Not that his novels are as complex as Dickens. But what I admire about Graham Greene, which I have always admired, is how his secondary characters are so rich.
I find that very engaging. I will try to write that. I mean, you try and you fail and you try to fail. But every time you touch that border a little closer. I like to write immersive stories where the reader is just immersed in a very unusual world.
You've mentioned your artist sister, you wrote How to Be a Canadian with your author brother Ian and creativity and art run in your family. What's that like?
My brother Ian is a playwright. My brother Dan is a journalist. My brother Sean is a composer. We all do our own thing. We've all got our own areas of interest. What we do relate to is just the creative side of it. We all have that urge.
And your son Genki, has just written his own debut novel, titled Satellite Love.
First of all, it's a fantastic novel. I was quite taken aback and proud beyond words. But he didn't tell me he was writing it. I think he wanted to make sure he could do it. But it's very different from my writing.
It's a very satisfying life to try to earn your living as a writer. It's very satisfying.
It's very poignant, reflective and very beautifully written. So I was very pleased with that, but I wasn't involved in it. I didn't intrude myself on any of that because I thought he had to do it on his own.
What does lasting success mean for you?
It's a very satisfying life to try to earn your living as a writer. On a very small scale, the fact that I can support my family writing is wonderful. But as far as the success of a book like The Finder, no book ever feels perfect or ever feels finished.
As soon as I finish a book, I'm already looking ahead to the next one.
Will Ferguson's comments have been edited for length and clarity.