Q&A: Patrick deWitt

Do you get "bad days" at the desk, when nothing you write is working? What's your solution—a break, coffee, vacation, horse tranquilizers?

Patrick deWitt: I don’t suffer through bad days—blocks, etc.—so much as bad eras. For example, after Ablutions, I spent a year and a half on a novel which wound up not cutting the mustard. When this dawned on me I probably could’ve used some tranquilizers but opted for a heroic bout of self-pity, all through the holidays and beyond.

Describe your ideal setting in which to write. Now describe your realistic situation where you do write.

My realistic situation is pretty ideal except for the tri-hourly visits from my five-year-old son, who hasn’t any faith in literary fiction as a vocation, and so has no qualms about interrupting me at work.

How does having a family change the way you approach your writing—on a day-to-day level, as well as the projects you may or may not choose to tackle?

Day-to-day I find it helpful, because I’m forced to keep regular hours, which makes for a clear-minded morning and a higher quality of work in general. In terms of projects, though, it’s definitely something I have to take into consideration. Case in point: I have an idea for a novel which would involve me traveling all over the world by myself to do research. You can imagine the conversation with my wife: "I’m going to Europe, Africa, Asia, and Russia—without you." She’d kick me in the dick!

Be honest: when was the last time you read Ablutions? How was that experience?

The last time I read it front to back was pre-publication, during the final line edits. I actually don’t recall how this felt, but having looked at nothing else for such a length of time I imagine I was ready to shelf it for awhile. Since then, every couple of months I’ll pick it up and read a page at random. I think you’re asking how it stands up for me? I believe the writing is sound. The subject matter makes me a little lonely. Altogether I’m very proud of it.

Do you ever seek to distance yourself from the novel's protagonist's more unsavory character traits some may presume are about your real life? Do you shrug and think, "that was the past"? Or do you plead poetic license and move on?

At the time of the book’s publication that was a concern, but now I don’t think about it hardly at all because I’ve come to see that the consequences of people thinking I’m the protagonist’s twin are vague bordering on non-existent. People may well be judging me, but if I don’t hear about it, how can I care? I’ve had a few random emails expressing concern/disgust, but the feeling these notes bring up fades away quickly.

Your upcoming novel, The Sisters Brothers, is a western. What brought that on?

I was reading a lot of dense, non-linear, suicide-type fiction, which is kind of my bailiwick, but it was the end of a long winter and I needed a break. I reread a few of the touchstone books from my youth, and the satisfaction these gave me inspired me to try for a relatively straightforward, story-based novel.

But how true to the genre is it? Are you a fan of western books or films?

Not really. The decision to go western was basically out-of-the-hat; it may just as well have been noir or science fiction. And I’m not sure where the book stands in terms of authenticity. I will say that once I decrypted the principal characters, something happened I wasn’t expecting, which was that all the spurs and dogies and scene dressing fell away and I began to care about them intensely as humans. In the end it wound up being not the diversionary romp I’d signed on for, but something more consequential.

As you write—be it prose, fiction, screenplays, whatever—do you imagine the fictional things you are describing being given life, like a script being acted out? When you were writing Ablutions, did you see the images in your head from your real-life experience and try to get that on paper? Or was it some other way?

It’s murkier than that, and directed more by feeling than vision. I have a poor memory, which as a writer has forced me to pull less from the factual past and more from an overall emotion that the past has left me with. In creating scenes there is I suppose a visual in my mind, but it’s distant and unreliable. I don’t want to call it dreamlike, because everything’s described as dreamlike, but it really is kind of—dreamlike.

How is Los Angeles different from Portland, from a writer's point of view? Both seem to be meccas for so many creative types... Does that inspire you, or make it harder to find peace and quiet?

Practically speaking, I get a lot more done in Portland, because I know about five people here. In L.A. I knew 500, and socially there was always so much to do, and I didn’t always have the self-control to stay home. I remember sitting at a coffee shop, looking around the table at my pals and thinking, "We’d all be perfectly happy to sit here bullshitting for the rest of our lives." Not to speak ill of bullshitting, or my friends, but the only way I was going to get anything done was if I left.

In terms of Portland being a mecca for creative types, I understand it to be so, and I’m happy to live in that kind of place, but it doesn’t have any real impact on what I’m doing, because my idea of a good time is closing the door to my office, pressing my feet to the heater grate, and putting on my big red soundproof earphones. F