Margaret Atwood Interview

This interview with Margaret Atwood came after her publishing The Blind Assassin (circa 2000), probably my favorite Atwood novel, from January Magazine, but I like some of this enough to pass along. 

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

No, I didn't. I knew from the age of 16, but before that, no. I did write the way most children write. As quite a young child I wrote. But then I didn't. For years. I had no interest in it. I read a lot, but I never thought I would be a writer. From about the ages of, say, seven to 16. I had other interests. At 16 I just started writing. Don't ask me why. I don't know. Looking back, you could say I always read. I always read a lot. I read voraciously. But I did not in my mind translate that voracious reading into writing.

And you were attacked by the muse at 16?

[Laughs] My own version is that a big thumb came out of the sky and said: You. And everybody at that time, which was 1956 in Toronto, Ontario -- which was not the multicultural metropolis that it is today, but was a rather provincial limited town. And I was at what was known as the most boring high school in the city. Although it was quite a good high school, but it was not pulsating with creative energy of that kind. Everyone thought I was a bit crazy.

For wanting to be a writer?

Well, apparently I was rash enough to actually say, in the high school cafeteria to my group of friends, that I was going to be a writer. Says one of my high school friends who told me this. I don't remember, but she said that we were all eating our little bag lunches with our packed sandwiches and apples and apparently I said this.

Provincial like, say, Indiana or Indianapolis, or the Midwest ion general? Does any of this sound far-removed from our experiences?  She goes on to say much about the writing life, which this is what i grabbed onto:

And now?

I wouldn't necessarily tell people that they should pursue a career in writing if they want a pension and a guaranteed income. It's a risk. It's a risk for anybody who takes it up. It's not a job with a pension plan, a boss and a guaranteed income and raises. It doesn't go like that.

And your "overnight success" has come with considerable hard work.

My overnight success did not come over night! [Laughs] I wrote for 16 years before I could make a living out of it. So, day jobs and being a student and getting scholarships and being the cashier behind the coffee shop soda counter. 

Referring to her then-forthcoming Negotiating With the Dead, she said:

[Laughs] Oh come on. Tell me one thing.\

One thing. Well, let's see now. OK, I'll tell you one thing that I put in the book which is: I went around asking writers the following question -- and these were mostly novelists. What is it like when you go into a novel? And nobody said: What do you mean, go into a novel? They all said: It's dark. It's like a dark room. It's like a dark room full of furniture I can't see. It's like a tunnel. It's like a cave. It's like going downstairs into a dark place. It's like wading through a river. It's like entering a labyrinth. Isn't that interesting?

What I have got to say about The Blind Assassin will appear here if I should live so long. Meanwhile, go read the novel.