What inspired Seascraper, and how did the story develop from that first burst of idea into a novel?
It began with an impulse to write about where I grew up. I grew up on the northwest coast of England in a dreary town called Southport. I was drawn to writing about home without actually putting a name on it. The more I thought about it, a photograph that my younger brother had taken of a shed on wheels parked up on the beach kept popping up. I knew what it was, a shrimping vessel, but I had never really thought of the industry as a whole and how big it was where I grew up. Slowly I grew attached to the idea of writing about one of these people, because I could place myself on that beach with them. I could project myself empathetically into that character. And I would say that was the starting point. Once I realized that [the character] could be a young person who’s inherited this sense of duty from his forefather, I understood I could attach him to the similar sort of ambitions I had when I was his age of wanting to get away from that place, while still feeling that he belonged there.
Much of your work, including Seascraper, explores characters negotiating artistic ambition. What makes you return to this theme?
I’ve always been a relentlessly creative person. Creativity has saved me from mental trauma. I’ve always been amazed at how a piece of music, a feat of architecture or a picture could move me. I have looked into what the origins of creativity might be, whether there’s a scientific explanation for it, or whether it’s something less knowable. And since there’s no definitive answer to it, it’s grown more compelling. I also find it difficult to write about characters who don’t have an instinct to create something. I always want to write about people who are looking to add more to the world than they’re taking from it. So that’s why I come back to write about makers and doers and dreamers, I think.
Seascraper has been praised for its lyrical prose and sense of tension. How do you approach language, pacing, and tone to achieve this effect?
{{/usCountry}}Seascraper has been praised for its lyrical prose and sense of tension. How do you approach language, pacing, and tone to achieve this effect?
{{/usCountry}}I’m really pleased that people have responded to it in that way. Because a lot of labour goes into making the prose flow. I try as hard as I can, even if it’s painful on some days, to make each sentence as fresh as it can be. I don’t like to repeat the same word in the same paragraph. If I can help it, I avoid using phrases that I feel are too straightforward or conversational. But over the course of my life as a writer and reader, I think I’ve learned how to blend the two tones, which are the direct, conversational/confessional and the more authored, crafted sentence of a third person narrator. I sit with a typewriter and try and write and rewrite the first sentence till it’s got a tone of voice or sense or manner of expression which excites me. Then I move to the next one, which many times makes me go back to the previous one. So, my writing is very tidal in a way, that constant washing in and washing out. And honestly, that is where the fun of writing is to me, kneading of the raw material into the effect you want.
Your novels are known for their psychological insight and character work. How do you balance writing about internal thought and narrative action?
What I try to do is place myself in the consciousness of the character as much as I can. I try to build my character’s perspective moment by moment. So, in a book like Seascraper, which is very much present tense, it’s unfolding as close to real time as a novel can. And because its narrative of the book is quite contained, in that it takes place over the course of a day and a bit, it was easy to juggle the two elements of novel writing, which is necessary to appreciate his position, his personality but also the sense that something should be rippling under the surface of the novel that it’s building towards. I tried to put myself into Tom, the protagonist’s situation, moment by moment, and see what would occupy him. Not just the task at hand on the beach, but also his other preoccupations — his longing for the girl he prays to ask out, his musical ambition, his secret hiding with his guitar, his worry that his mother might find it. We human beings are this constantly shaken snow globe of anxieties and thoughts. I try to be with my characters as honestly as I can without thinking about what the book needs them to do. I learned quite early on in my writing life that it’s not helpful to a novel to impose the demands of the narrative onto the characters. The characters have to drive the demands of the narrative themselves. So, I try to just be as truthful to that as I can. But sometimes you have to intervene as an author and say this is becoming a bit too digressive (laughs). You have to then take “authorial” control and be like, can we make something happen here?
You’ve spoken about writing longhand, often outdoors. What draws you to that practice, and how does it shape the rhythm or texture of your prose?
Well, it was a practice only for this book. It was amazing to do it because usually, I’m a writer who sits with a computer and types in my thoughts and yes, deletes and rewrites. This time around I had to get out because the house next door, they were having some extensive work done and it went on droning for over a year. I also was in a little bit of an existential crisis, for want of a better phrase, when I was writing this book. I wasn’t really enjoying writing, or even reading, for a long time. I had to somehow pull myself out of that funk that I got myself into. Then one late spring, I got this A4 notepad and pencil and I thought, I’m going to have a walk out of my house. There’s a lovely old church with a garden and a bench that happened to be empty that day. It was so quiet [compared to my house] and I just sat down and thought, “Let’s see what I can do.” I spent all day writing and I thought, “Oh, that was wonderful!” What I had written wasn’t very good, but I hadn’t been lost in the process of writing for a long time before then. Then it just became a routine, rain or shine, I felt the pull to go back out there and write. And [writing in the rain] also really helped me get a sense of what Tom must’ve felt like working on the sea, getting soaked every day. I don’t know if this process will work for me again in the same way. I’m definitely going to try it though (laughs).
You grew up in northwest England. How did your early environment and experiences shape your sense of storytelling?
Growing up in the north of England is a very different experience from where I live now [London]. Everything that happens in the creative industry, be it music or publishing or film, it all happens in and around London. So, when I was growing up, I felt very distant from that. If I wanted to go to London, it was an expense. I had to save up for weeks. It was an adventure to go to London. Part of me always knew I would have to live away from where I grew up if I wanted to pursue what I wanted to do with my life. When I was growing up in my town, I never wanted to write about it. It felt parochial and slow, lacking any dramatic interest at all. It felt to me that if you wanted to write about the North, everything came out in a slightly comic way or sounded like Coronation Street. It didn’t seem to represent what I wanted to write about which was closer to the Great Plains of America. Most of my early fiction from when I was in my teens and early twenties was set in some version of America that I’d created. I went to live and study in Canada, and that felt like I received a gift, in that it gave me a newfound appreciation of where I came from. I learned how to make stories feel as cinematic as I wanted them to be. I learned to appreciate where I grew up and the differences between there and where I live now.
Did growing up in a working-class context influence the characters or settings you choose?
I’ve pretty much exclusively written protagonists who are working class, who are either compelled to stay within the same system or who fall in with more privileged sets of people through their talent. I’m particularly interested in British stories about class because even though in some ways those barriers have dissolved, they still in many ways remain as obstacles to people. There’s a constant friction which I find just endlessly fascinating. And I feel like I can write from both sides of that spectrum because of the way my life has panned out, approaching characters without any sense of judgement.
Was there a single pivotal moment or encounter that made you realize you wanted to write professionally?
I knew I always wanted to write, but whether I knew I wanted to write fiction when I was younger, I’m not sure. I wanted to be a singer-songwriter from the age of about 14 to until about the age of 24. I was absolutely committed to that idea and wanted to get a record deal, have my own band. I got very close to achieving what I wanted, but never quite there and had to pick myself up off it. After having quit my A-levels, I went back to my local college to get a kind of fallback qualification. My art and design course really put me around creative people in a way that I hadn’t been before. I was interested in photography but I was absolutely terrible at using a camera. So, I had this idea at the end of my qualification to do a series of photographs and accompanying stories about the people and the characters in those photographs. And I really enjoyed the process of conjuring characters from nothing but words on a page. And that made me realise I should keep doing that. I also went on to realise that I’m much better at writing narrative because I’m able to control the vision of it. Also, it’s very portable. You don’t need anything but a pencil and a piece of paper.
Which authors or books have most shaped you — both as a writer, influencing your themes and style, and as a reader, forming part of your personal favourites or lifelong reading list?
For a long time, I exclusively read contemporary American fiction. Then, when I moved to Canada, I started to read Canadian fiction, then moved on to Australian fiction and World fiction. But there was a big gap in my reading of British fiction, which I then spent the last couple of decades trying to address. I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger. I absolutely loved Michael Marshall Smith’s Only Forward, and One of Us. Paul Aster’s New York trilogy made me really want to pursue writing fiction. I love [Paul Aster]’s overlooked novels, In the Country of Last Things and Mr Vertigo. So much American fiction has informed my writing — Donna Tartt, Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers, Shirley Jackson, Cormac McCarthy. I love Michael Ondaatje’s writing, Anne Michaels’ work. I’ve been rattling on, haven’t I!? Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner is a masterpiece. I love teaching The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel, particularly the short story Comma, which for me contains everything that’s good about fiction — especially British fiction. ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a short story collection which I return to quite often. There are many, so many more.
Finally, please tell us what you’re currently working on or the directions you are exploring in your next work.
I’m in a bit of a pocket where I’m just waiting and seeing how things pan out with Seascraper for a little while. I’ve got ideas that are germinating at the moment and I’d like to be more certain about what I’m going to do next. Currently, I’m drawn to the idea of writing a set of short novels, which I either set in Longferry (from Seascraper) at different times of its existence or which build from characters which might already exist [in Seascraper]. Not necessarily a sequel, but I’m intrigued by the idea of writing a set of stories which are informed by that place. Of course, I may end up writing something completely else (laughs) but that’s where my heart currently is.
Rutvik Bhandari is an independent writer. He lives in Pune. He is a reader and a content creator. You can find him talking about books on Instagram and YouTube (@themindlessmess).