The British are actually a lot more appreciative of the comic. In Canada, if you're perceived as a comic writer, there's a real snobbery, and you can't be serious. You're not a big hitter.
I have a problem with beginnings... and endings... and middles. But I don't know what else I would do. I find it very, very difficult to write. It takes everything; it's physically and mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. And my neighbours. And my dog.
There was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine.
I remember a very nurturing, safe environment: everybody knew who I was, who my parents were, who my grandparents were, what part of Russia we were from originally. That was a really comforting feeling. Non-Mennonites, when they see that aspect of it, think it's a beautiful thing, and it is, but there's so much going on besides.
You don't need a religious background to strive for something good, for genuine compassion and love for others.
This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing.
A lot of times, people think that it doesn't make sense for people to be depressed when they have everything, a loving husband, a successful career, fame and fortune. I wanted to make this point that profound despair can strike anybody.
'Irma Voth' is my sixth book, but it's only the third time I've featured Mennonite settings and characters.
I would never want to deny my Mennonite background and culture; I'll always feel like and be identified as a Mennonite and therefore possess that little extra authority on our beliefs. I also see myself as a Canadian writer.
Canada has, at times, represented itself as a country in a valiant struggle against powerful and menacing agents that are indifferent to its special practices and sensibilities - most especially American culture. It's the old, outdated garrison mentality.
I don't even know what 'successful' means. We're all failures. Look at the world. We're all complicit.
When a person becomes a legend, the very thing that makes them human and knowable is killed off, so it's like being killed over and over and over again, for all eternity.
I spent 18 years in a small Mennonite town in the middle of the Canadian prairies.
Ignore all advice about writing. Leave your blood on every page. Every page!
The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.
