Zoë Strachan: “The freedom to try things out”

Zoë Strachan is the author of three books: 2002’s Negative Space, which followed a life model as she came to terms with her brother’s death, and her own identity; 2004’s Spin Cycle, which followed multiple characters who all worked in a laundrette; and now in 2011, Ever Fallen in Love. It’s a compelling, and very accessible story about Richard, a games designer, as he reflects on what happened when he fell in love with Luke, a straight friend, at University. The story develops in unexpected, fascinating ways, with Strachan deftly pulling its strings, and this reader, at least, was more than happy let her. During the course of this interview, Strachan was, as you can experience in her fiction, thoughtful, funny at times, and clear throughout.

Was Negative Space the longest thing you’d written at the time?

Yes, it definitely was. I’m not really the kind of person who’s got dozens of novels locked away in a chest of drawers. It started as a few short stories, but then I realised that two short stories maybe shared the same character. I was at the end of an MLitt in creative writing and I had a really lovely tutor, a guy called Adam Piette who said that if you keep writing stories with the same themes, try and make them a novel. And then I finished the course but just kept going with it and it did turn into a novel. I think the themes had achieved a sort of intensity that meant that it felt like I was engaging in a really long piece of work, and it was difficult to think of it in those terms, of it becoming a novel, but it was very much propelled by what it was about, that feeling of a critical mass of emotional content maybe.

Did you feel at some point that you’d crossed the line into ‘longest’ territory?

I think there was a feeling of having crossed a line when I knew I wasn’t going to stop it, I was going to try and see it out and finish it. Louise [Welsh, Strachan’s partner, author of The Cutting Room, Naming the Bones and more, and who Ever Fallen in Love is dedicated to] and I talk about this sometimes because we were on that course at the same time, and I think although most people on the course were thinking about publication and hoping for it, it seemed a very abstract thing in a way that I don’t think it is now. We were probably all a bit clueless in different ways and really focused on the writing, so writing a novel, at first it didn’t seem like something that was ever going to see the light of day and luckily I was naïve enough then that when I’d got a contract and it was sold before it was finished – maybe luckily or unluckily – I still didn’t imagine it was ever quite going to be in print, or be a solid thing.

In Negative Space, the narrator’s name isn’t mentioned until near the end. Is this sort of withholding of information deliberate? I notice in Ever Fallen in Love that the University isn’t mentioned by name.

I think that is an odd parallel with that book in that respect, and maybe the way time moves in that book, a really kind of non-linear structure along with the bits that are more chronological. With not revealing my character’s name in Negative Space it seemed, I think it was to do with her identity being so hard to pin down and so difficult for her to isolate or name in any way. There’s lots of things that she can’t name to do with what she’s feeling, or things that’ve happened, I think she evades quite a few things in the book, and that was a narrative device that represents that in another way. But I think that’s kind of a fun thing about writing, sometimes things are missing at first because you haven’t quite realised what they are, and then the things that are missing become much more present, which I suppose is what the title, Negative Space is actually about.

Just to clear this up, have you ever read the book of film criticism [by Manny Farber] called Negative Space?

No, I haven’t. I have heard of it, yeah, but I haven’t read it. I thought about the title because years ago I’d done life modelling, not when I was working on the book or anything like that, it’s not based on experience in that sort of way, but it was a term I heard a lot at that time, and I saw visual representations of it that just stuck with me, I think.

As light relief, a first general question: What is the least necessary thing that you enjoy reading?

At the moment it’s a toss up between Jonathan Kellerman and Phillipa Gregory… and I think Jonathan might be the one that I’d miss least. I think he’s good at what he does, but I kind of know if I read him that it’s the same plot, same character, etc.

Negative Space was written from one viewpoint, in the first person, then Spin Cycle follows multiple characters, in the third person, and in Ever Fallen in Love you’ve moved outwith yourself to a male character, with first and third person sections. Were you consciously planning any of this?

Not a plan at all, no. I think I would find it hard to plan in that way because so much is dictated by the story and the characters themselves. People often say it’s easier to write in the first person and I don’t think it is at all, or if it’s easier it’s probably harder to write well. I don’t know what I’ll do next, that’s interesting… second person? No - I think there are enough second person novels. I suppose I’d do something that’s a mixture.

Do you feel like there’s a development there?

Yes, I do. I think it [Ever Fallen in Love] is quite different stylewise, and I think that that was maybe partly led by the character, and stepping outside myself to develop a male character. I think that actually influenced the style more than my conscious desire to write better or try and make a better novel. So maybe it’s something that liberated me.

They say there’s a second novel syndrome – but, extending that, have you had any difficulties writing at any stage?

Almost all the time. I think there definitely is a second novel syndrome. I remember saying to my agent when I was writing my second novel ‘This is much, much harder,’ and he said ‘Of course it’s harder, it keeps getting harder, your fourteenth novel will be your hardest yet’, and I took it with a pinch of salt, and yet Spin Cycle was harder to write, and Ever Fallen in Love was a lot, lot harder to write, so there may be something in this. Or maybe it’s just that you’re always learning, and become more critical of yourself. Also, with Ever Fallen in Love other things came up and I was working in different fields, and doing drama and doing opera and so on.

Is harder necessarily a bad thing?

I don’t think it is a bad thing. It’s not a particularly pleasant thing, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing, because then the end result gets better. I think with Ever Fallen in Love one of the reasons it was harder was that I started unexpectedly and was carried away and wrote a lot of the past narratives that then went off in a different direction and it wasn’t becoming the story I wanted to write. So then there was a kind of reining back and developing another timeframe it needed, to show the point of a story in a way. But that took time.

A second general question: Which writers, or which book, are you the unique reader of, amongst people you know?

I’ve always really liked the fiction of the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington. I know now that other people have read her, though because I’ve bought her books for lots of different people.  I remember Richard Brautigan’s novel The Hawkline Monster being one that stuck with me for a really long time, and then going for years before meeting other people who’d read it, or persuading other people to read it. The most recent thing that I read and liked, and didn’t know anyone else who’d read it (until I made Louise) was a book by a Swiss writer called Peter Stamm called Seven Years, about a love triangle and architecture – it was really good.

In Ever Fallen in Love, events in the present alternate with a more compressed version of events in the past. I’ve seen this a lot (Andrew Raymond Drennan last month, and Iain Banks generally) – it’s probably coincidence, but is it possible Scottish authors are particularly attracted to this form?

I don’t think it’s particularly Scottish. I think it’ something quite a lot of writers do and actually it happens in that Peter Stamm book as well. For me it’s one of the themes that I’m really stuck with, I’m really interested in memory and how you retell your own story. I think that’s one of these fundamental things that you can’t escape about being a person, that you’ve got this ability to remember, not just ‘don’t put your hand in a fire’ or ‘the water from that stream is poisonous’ but you can actually spin the story of your life again an again and try and make it come out differently or the same, or see it on different ways. Maybe Scots like to look backwards, maybe we’re more melancholic.

This is a tightly constructed book, in terms of plot and structure. Did that come about through planning, or more organically?

It grew into it.  It really wasn’t [as tight] at first. And I think that some of the plot’s oblique, I think that some of the things that are big for me, or were big when I was writing it, aren’t really present in the text, maybe to do with Luke’s background or experiences, or maybe gaps that Richard leaves in his story. But I think that’s a result of the structure too, of trying to maintain tension a bit more. I’m not really interested in plot – I mean, I really love reading things with plot, but it’s pretty low on my list of things I want to do. I do appreciate that it can make for more satisfying reading than to be reading something with no plot whatsoever. So it was intentional but not planned. I think having a linear narrative in the present that gave it a backbone helped with that, for me, because I knew, ‘well this will happen, the story will go on, ultimately Richard will have to move forward’ and the only thing that was a complete surprise happened on the very last page, which was not what I intended at all.

Your first book was written in 2002, your second in 2004, and now your third has come out in 2011. Why the longer gap?

A couple of practical reasons – the first two books were contracted, and had deadlines built in, and actually deadlines can be very good. And useful. And stimulating. So can being paid on particular dates for things. I didn’t have that for this book and it seemed great at first, but then… well, ultimately it was good, because I needed more time, and the freedom to try things out and then change my mind about them, but other things started to come up and I wanted to work on other things, shorter pieces, plays and things. And probably other pressures, teaching and so on, whittles time down a bit. I’d like the next novel not to take so long, but maybe that’s optimistic.

Have you got anything in mind?

Yes, I really do, there’s something that I’ve kind of started but I’m not quite sure if I’m ready to do it yet, so it might need to be something else before this thing that I’ve had in my mind since around about or before Spin Cycle, I’ve had an idea lurking around that I need to gird my loins for, and I’m not sure I’m girded yet. [Laughter ensues]

I’ll end with one last general question: What is the most complicated thing that you’d read for pleasure?

Almost anything I read, I read for pleasure, or get pleasure from it, so it could be Finnegans Wake, which I read for my bedtime reading. I know there’s a Finnegans Wake study group and I should have gone and read a page at a time, but I enjoyed it more just reading it.