Getting 2 Know Wayne Grady

Wayne Grady is a prolific journalist, author, and editor specializing in fiction, travel, science and nature writing. He is the former editor of Harrowsmith magazine, and an award winning translator. The co-author of Tree: A Life Story with David Suzuki, he is also author of 14 books of science and natural history, and editor of six anthologies of short stories. He has won three Science in Society Awards and numerous National Magazine Awards.

Book Club Buddy: What do you enjoy most about writing?

Wayne Grady: I actually enjoy all the many phases a writer goes through in the course of writing a book, with the exception of the phase during which the book seems to be totally unforthcoming and quite stupid in any case. Fortunately I usually take Annie Dillard’s advice to never listen to yourself when you think the writing is awful (and it’s corollary, which is never listen to yourself when you think the writing is sublime).

I like the heat of writing the first draft, when all things are possible but unknown, when I seem to have chained myself to a giant animal that is dragging me off into a land of bifurcating pathways. I also like the somewhat cooler second and third drafts, when I go back and look at where the beast dragged me and try to discern a relationship between the bifurcations. The fourth and fifth drafts are satisfying, because that’s when I add new thoughts that strengthen the relationships and delete some of the old thoughts that didn’t go anywhere and perhaps belong in a different book. Drafts six and seven are usually when the doubts begin to take hold, so I don’t enjoy them much (but I can always start that different book to get charged up again by that delicious first draft). Draft eight is very soothing. After the doldrums of the previous draft, I have let the book sit for a while, and when I go back to reread it I find sections here and there that aren’t really too bad after all, and with maybe a tweak here and there I can salvage it. Then there is the usual major rewrite of draft nine, which has many of the aspects of draft one, and we’re back on the carousel.

Book Club Buddy: What are books for?

Wayne Grady: Books are attempts to make sense of the world. I do not like books that merely reflect the apparent chaos of daily life, I like books that try to discern the subtle relationships that exist between events and the characters that precipitate them. I think books are meant to provide readers with ways of making sense, of seeing things from new and different perspectives, and of using those perspectives to go on. Books are not reports from the future, they are windows on the present. They don’t provide answers, but they ask the right questions

Breakfast at the Exit Cafe by Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds

Read about Wayne Grady’s latest book, Breakfast at the Exit Cafe, co-authored with Merilyn Simonds.

Visit Wayne Grady’s WEBSITE

READERS: 

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