Coffee Chat with James Dick
Pour yourself a nice steaming cup and settle in to get to know James Dick a little better.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you located? Do you have a day job?
I'm a full time media student at Ryerson University, currently in 3rd year, and putting my nose to the grindstone of our Project Development course.
I've lived in Scarborough my whole life, but I've been lucky enough to travel all over the back woods of Canada, from Cape Spear to Vancouver Island, from Toronto to Inuvik. My travels have informed my writing as much as the books I've read or the films and TV shows I've watched.
In addition to being a writer of short stories and novels, I'm also a screenwriter with Seven Films, and a film critic at Bitesize Breakdown on Instagram, where I review film and television in quick, punchy, 100-word reviews. I recently had my directorial debut with a short horror comedy, "Clucked," in 2020 that was shortlisted by the Toronto 48 Hour Film Project producers' panel.
To date, I have two publication credits with Blank Spaces and have thoroughly enjoyed my relationship with this magazine.
How do you take your coffee? With brown sugar and cream.
What Blank Spaces issue were you first published in? Volume 5 Issue 2, December 2020.
When did you first know you wanted to write? I've been telling stories for as long as I can remember. As a child, I was always more comfortable disappearing into imaginary worlds rather than spend much time in the real one. I could go into the backyard and play-act with toy swords for hours, weaving huge, complex stories of magic and adventure. My parents kept telling me I should write these stories down, and one day, in grade five, that's exactly what I did. I just started pouring all the worlds in my head out onto paper and I haven't stopped.
What are you reading right now? What is it about and what keeps you coming back to the pages? Right now, I'm reading 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's my second time through the book since I first picked it up in late 2015 and I'm just blasting through it. Astronomy, orbital mechanics, and rocket engineering are hobbies of mine (as my 300+ hours spent playing Kerbal Space Program can attest) and this book is the reason for that. Returning to it with a better understanding of those fields and armed with the latest discoveries made by NASA, I'm astounded at how much the author, Arthur C. Clarke, got right about his depiction of the Solar System and the worlds within it, as well as his depictions of space travel. It shouldn't be a surprise, being a scientist himself, but I can think of no other author of fiction whose work is responsible for the invention of as important a technology as artificial satellites.
More than his understanding of the universe, what draws me to Clarke's writing his is unbridled ability to perfectly communicate the wonder and scope of it. He somehow gives the reader a perfect understanding of how all these celestial bodies work in a dramatic, poignant style of prose. Everything is beautiful to him, and he goes out of his way to share that beauty with the reader. He's also one of the earliest sci-fi writers to create nuanced depictions of women in scientific and astronautical roles (one of his earliest short stories depicts a group of girls taking a field trip to the Moon and ultimately using their knowledge of astronomy and science to save the day when things go wrong).
What role has Blank Spaces played in your creative journey? When Blank Spaces published my short story, "Paper Mite Revolution," in their December 2020 issue, it was my first publishing credit. It marked the end of two years of rejections from publications across North America. I felt a feeling of elation, of having broken through a wall. Being published in Blank Spaces affirmed my faith in my own writing and gave me the confidence to push forward and aggressively market my work. It was also a valuable lesson: markets are interested in my oddball stories, and I'd do well to keep them in the mail and believe that they'll find the right home.
Tell us a little about the piece Blank Spaces published and how it was received by family, friends, and the greater community? "Paper Mite Revolution" is the story of a small bug with big ideas who ends up biting off more than he can chew (in more ways than one). It was inspired by a line from an episode of "Game of Thrones": "Watch out for the paper mites. They like flesh as well as paper." The idea of little insects living inside our books was hilarious and fascinating to me, but more fascinating still was the idea that these critters absorb the knowledge of whatever text they eat (an idea which I came up with on my own). The story basically wrote itself with little effort on my part, but I was constantly asking myself the question: "Will anybody even want to read this?" It was a niche tale with even more niche references dusted with a David X. Cohen sense of humour.
It was well-liked by everyone who read it and for a month afterwards, I received an unending stream of "congratulations" and "very funny" from my friends and family. My sense of self-doubt often chimed in and tried to tell me they were only saying that because it was officially published, that if they'd read it before it had been published they might have been more brutally honest. After a while, I realized I had to stop thinking that way. Blank Spaces thought it was good enough to put into their catalogue and promote heavily. That's a sign of how far I've come as a writer.
Describe how you see the landscape of Canadian publishing. Canadian publishing, to me at least, tends more towards literature and poetry publishing rather than genre publishing, and most of the Canadian publishers I'm familiar with don't pay their contributors. While I'm aware of some Canadian publications that put out genre fiction and pay very well for it, they are few and far between. When I look at a list of genre publishers like Ralan.com, there's a paucity of Canadian names there. For my part, I would like to see Canadian publishers pay their contributors as well as their American counterparts do. Canadian writers like me who take their craft seriously would love to publish more work in Canada, but more often than not, we end up sending our work south of the border because the magazines there have a greater reputation and pay far better than the ones up here.
I dream of a day when Canadian magazines and publications are as well-known and respected as the ones in America, and Americans come to us for the best in literary and genre fiction, and Canadian writers happily send their work to Canadian publishers and receive professional payment for their stories.
Why is Canadian content important? Canada is a kaleidoscope of peoples and stories. The layers of civilization that have accumulated in Canada, from the First Nations to the Scandinavians to the English, French, and the rest of the European peoples are at once beautiful and terrible. Canada has a rich, complicated history, and is likely to have an even richer, more complicated future. Canada is a world leader in space and science; a partner in exploring the universe. We work to promote awareness of our Indigenous cultures. We have a unique sense of humour. We're on the frontiers of technology and paleontology. Canada is a dazzlingly multifaceted, diverse country with an inexhaustible well of stories. Our perspective on history, politics, and world affairs is entirely our own, and I want to see that perspective shared with the rest of the world. Canadian content opens a dialogue about our mistakes, our successes, our greatest tragedies, and most glorious triumphs. We're a complicated people, but our stories help us understand who we are. That's why Canadian content is so important.
Where has your creative journey taken you since being published in Blank Spaces? Lately I've been pushing very hard to get my work published in professional SFWA genre markets, and I'm working very hard to write every single day and keep my stories out on the market. I've also written a fantasy novel that's soon to be sent to an editor, and I've planned an anthology in the same universe as the novel with a set of recurring characters. I've also won Blank Spaces gold medal for their flash fiction contest and that piece appearred in the March 2021 issue.
What does your writing process look like? My writing process is as follows:
1. When a general idea comes to me, I write it down in point-form. Sometimes it's a place, a person, or event.
2. I write the general premise of the story in a clear, well-articulated sentence or paragraph.
3. I get specific and write down who the characters are, what their needs and desires are, and brief backstories about each of the principals.
4. I draft an outline of the whole story, sometimes using a 3-act structure for longer works, sometimes a 5-act structure, sometimes a series of bullet points if it's just a short story. Whatever the case, I need to know exactly what the point of the story is.
5. I write the first draft out by hand (yes, even novels, though they end up shorter than the final draft). This makes me choose my words carefully and really think about the story as its being born. Then I let it sit for a week or two without looking at it (though if I have a deadline, say for a writing contest, sometimes I don't have time to let it sit).
6. Coming back to the story with fresh eyes, I type it up on my computer, editing as I go. This is when the best form of the narrative starts to take shape.
7. I immediately go back to the start and reread it, editing as I go.
8. I print out a hard copy and read the story again, using a red pen to do yet another edit. Stories (for me at least) look and read very different when I hold them in my hands as opposed to reading them on a screen, and since the ultimate goal for all my stories is for a reader to physically hold them, I have to see how it feels to hold the story too.
9. I input my red pen edits into the computer draft.
10. I send the draft of the story to my friends and to my editor, Genevieve Clovis (of Clovis Editorial). (Always have a professional editor do a pass of your work, if you can afford it. You and your friends won't have nearly as discriminating an eye as an editor does.)
11. Once Clovis sends her edits to me, I input them into the current draft of the story, and send it out to markets.
How do you invest in your writing goals? I purchase digital copies of magazines I'm thinking of submitting to to get a feel for the work they publish. I also purchase books about publishing and regularly attend writing prompt groups run by Genevieve Clovis to keep my mind sharp. They're like improv classes for writers, forcing you think fast and write fast, without overthinking everything you write.
What one thing would you give up to become a better writer? Now this is a tough question, mainly because I try to make sure that all the things in my life contribute to me being a better writer. But if I had to give something up, it might be coffee: drinking too much of it too late in the day keeps me up all night, and leaves me with no energy in the morning to write (which is the time I'd like to be writing).
If you could tell your young creative self anything, what would it be? "You might feel like you're alone, you might feel like no one understands you, you might feel like the worlds in your head make you an outsider, but let me tell you something: one day, you'll meet people who will want to live in those worlds, who may even need those worlds to survive the same way you do. You'll meet people who are just like you, who will understand you, and help you understand yourself. The things that you think make you an outsider right now are the keys to teams and projects that will give you the sense of purpose and fun you've been looking for your whole life. Keep creating, keep telling yourself those stories, and have them ready for the day the world comes looking for them."
Who are your writing influences and how do they motivate you? Clive Barker, Arthur C. Clarke, and Seanan McGuire are three of my biggest influences.
Barker taught me to write forcefully: if I'm writing about something beautiful, stun the reader with that beauty; if it's scary, scare the hell out of the reader. Don't take half measures. Don't be soft with language. And above all, he taught me to treat my words with care and be disciplined in my practice.
Clarke taught me to research my subjects thoroughly. I find that researching my stories actually changes them because I learn new things about the topic I'm working on. He taught me to let myself be surprised and delighted by the world around me.
McGuire taught me to love my characters, but also to put them through hell, because readers won't love them unless they endure hardship. She also taught me that quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive: that I can be prolific with my prose, but also high-quality.
Who is your hero of fiction? Many characters inspire me, but if I had to choose, the one I admire the most would be Wintermute from William Gibson's Neuromancer. In a world populated by low life humans content to be grifters and profiteers, Wintermute, an Artificial Intelligence, is literally the only character who wants something better both for itself and the rest of its kind. It doesn't want to destroy humanity or even really harm us; it just wants to offer the others of its kind the choice of freedom and self determination, and its willing to go through any amount of pain to give them that choice.
What is the first book that made you cry? No book has made me cry. Yet.
What do you tell yourself every time it gets hard and you want to quit? : I tell myself that the times where things seem hardest are actually the times I'm closest to success. All I need to do is keep faith in my abilities and work my process.
Do you have any writing rituals that help the words flow? Sometimes I'll pick up Winston Churchill's "The Second World War" and read a few pages from that. Ol' Winston's facility with the English language is, in my opinion, unparalleled, and reading a chapter or two from "The Gathering Storm" or "Their Finest Hour" usually recharges my batteries. In the evening, after dinner, sometimes I'll pour a glass of wine and brainstorm for fifteen minutes. It really unlimbers my brain.
I should clarify though that one should NEVER rely on substances like alcohol to be creative. If you have a little voice in your head that's saying "Oh, I can only be creative when I drink/smoke/(insert other substance here)," shut that voice down. It's lying to you. Your creativity comes from you, the stories you read, and the people you talk to, not from the substances you consume.
Who do you think makes a better writer — a pragmatist or an empath? Why? Both are needed. A writer needs to be an empath to write the story and see it through the characters' eyes (this is absolutely necessary when writing the antagonist; no empathy means your antagonist won't be relatable or understandable and the story dies). Afterwards, a writer needs to be a pragmatist to trim the story, cut out characters and plots that aren't working, and streamline the narrative for publication.
The empath writes the story.
The pragmatist sells the story.
What advice do you have for writers struggling to break into the industry? Probably the same advice that any other published author would give: read every day, write every day, and FINISH WHAT YOU START. I can't stress the last part enough. If you start a short story, finish it by the end of the week. If you start a novel, finish it in eight months.
But above all, I think the best advice is "Follow your gut." If you believe in the story you've written, if you feel in your entrails that this is a story the world needs to see, you're probably right. Be persistent and keep sending it out to markets. If it gets rejected, spin it around and send it right back out the instant you get that rejection letter. Don't stop until it's accepted.
What are your creative goals? Where do you see yourself in five years? My goal for the next five years is to find a home for every one of the 13 stories currently on my submission chart, to get a literary agent, to finish writing a second novel, and to complete my fantasy anthology.
What are you currently working on? At this very moment I'm writing an entry for Dark Dragon Publishing's upcoming anthology "Dreaming the Goddess."
What should we be watching for from you? Check out Bitesize Breakdown on Instagram for my upcoming reviews of "Snowpiercer," "The Stand," and season 2 of "For All Mankind." If you're a gamer who plays "Hearts of Iron IV," check out the mod "The New Order: Last Days of Europe." It's an alternate history story where the Axis powers won WWII. I've written numerous in-game events for the Central Intelligence Agency and Mexico.
If you’re a past Blank Spaces contributor and would like to be featured in a virtual coffee chat, please complete our online interview form.
Work by James can be found in back issues of the magazine.
