Shawn Syms met with Nathan Whitlock at Sakura Ichiban in Toronto in March 2008.

For info on readings etc., see the "A Week of This" Facebook group, or nathanwhitlock.com.

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Working at a publishing magazine eases the way a little in terms of balancing a job and a writing career. There are inevitable complications in terms of time, and given the specific nature of the magazine and my job, I need to be careful about conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts—but otherwise it’s been a huge benefit to see the industry from the inside, especially when it comes to publicizing the book. At the very least, it’s instructive to work in an industry where, by definition, the mere fact that you have a book is not in itself ground-shaking. Makes you feel less of a sense of writerly entitlement and realize that you might as well focus on the work itself, not its residual effects on your personal ego.

In this role I get to be exposed to many kinds of writing that I otherwise wouldn’t have read. Of course, some of it is terrible. Just because something is between covers doesn’t make it brilliant. I’ve spotted my own bad writing habits in other people’s work, and I got to learn from that. But in terms of the more mercenary things—knowing what sells and what doesn’t, and trying to let that influence your choices in terms of character or plot—the minute you try and do that, the work becomes dishonest.

I’m 35. Waiting this long was not fun, but I don’t regret it. I would have jumped at the chance to be published in my early twenties, but I’m relieved it never happened—the results would have been garbage.

I’ve always wanted to write fiction, though I did it very badly for a very long time. But I know a lot of people who published very young and after their first book came out, they weren’t ready for the long haul. There’s no magical door that opens up that says you’re in Writerland and you get to just wander around. You have to write more books! Some people in that situation, next thing you know, their deadline is looming and they just feel lost. All the excitement of a first book is gone—and it’s all up to them to keep going.

TDR: A Week of This is certainly not a plot-driven novel. Sure, things happen, but by the end of the seven days over which the story transpires, very little is actually resolved.

I do feel the book has a climax of sorts, but it happens in an unexpected and almost unnoticed way. But I resisted pressure for the "crane shot"—that final pullback where you see the leaves in the wind and everything gets worked out. I didn’t want to tie all the story threads neatly together. Still, there’s a sense of tension all the same. So hopefully the build-up of events will keep readers interested in the book, even if there is no big explosion near the end.

This reflects my own tastes. I like the novels of Saul Bellow—but I find they are always the most brilliant in the first seventy pages, when he hasn’t yet locked into any chronological timeframe for the story; he’s just talking, moving back and forth in time, circling around on all these different levels.

Fiction is a great dialectical exercise where you don’t have to resolve an issue; you can just keep bouncing it back and forth.

Having an ensemble cast was important for me. My taste in art very much works against presenting one mentality or a single consciousness. I like things that show people as an eco-system, how they all fit in. That’s why I adore the British show The Office: it’s great at showing so many different "types" in a contained environment. That’s something that has always fascinated me, showing everything as a system rather than revolving around a single person, and making everything else subjective based on that one person’s perception.

I get frustrated with books where every character speaks like the narrator, who is clearly based on the author. It’s like that scene in Being John Malkovich: they are all essentially the writer, in a wig, with a moustache, wearing a suit, all doing the same thing. That can kill a book. You’re just getting a monologue.

It’s very much based on Pembroke, Ontario, an old town on the banks of the Ottawa River where I grew up. People from there who’ve read it have had strong reactions—not all of them positive. In some cases, it reminded them of their own childhoods. People from other small towns have found it resonant as well.

I’m doing a reading there in May. I’m interested in seeing what the reaction will be. Maybe they’ll be flattered. Or maybe they will think I make it seem like the most dismal place on earth!

It falls between two poles. On the one hand, it’s not experimental in style, it’s not very brash. Sometimes I read books and can tell the author is trying very hard to "stick it to the man." A lot of experimental or avant-garde writing feels that way. Other writers seem very self-conscious that they are not writing the typical Canadian story, so they are going to be brash. But none of it feels real; the characters talk like movie thugs.

But at the same time it’s not Giller-bait either—the sort of soft-focus, middlebrow books… Pressure for those books comes from agents and editors and publishers. "How about some epic historical fiction? Give us that fat novel that we can put up for the Giller." The result is that people compromise their vision to get into a sales stream, without realizing how narrow it is, and how few people make it through.

TDR: I thought books in Canada don’t sell much anyway.

It’s true, they don’t—which is why a lot of people are selling out their own honesty for nothing.

Most books don’t sell, so you are on a level playing field. You have the freedom of being "irrelevant" and not having all that pressure on you, so I don’t understand when people pressure themselves. I understand it from a human point of view, but I don’t know why they don’t fight against it more.