'Windmill': A Novel

Windmill author Rob Bignell answers some questions about his new book, the modern novel, and how he writes fiction.

Q: No one seems to be reading anymore. Is fiction – and the novel – relevant in modern America?

I disagree that no one reads anymore. It’s simply a question of what they read and how they read it – genre literature and nonfiction pieces, especially those sold or viewed for free on the web, arguably is at an all-time high where readership is concerned. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t reading literary novels, the deep, meaty kind of stuff that college professors like to teach. I’m not putting down literary novels – in fact I prefer to read that type of literature and wish more Americans would as well. But the question really needs to be rephrased; it ought to be “Why aren’t more people reading quality literature? Why do they read something else?”

The answer probably has something to do with our culture, I suppose. We Americans are more Roman than Greek; we prefer the utilitarian over the ideal, the concrete over the fluid. “The arts” in its broadest sense are seen as a luxury of time and wealth rather than as a necessity of everyday existence. To be an English major is to be unemployable, unless you’re going to become a high school teacher. By extension, the novel and other written fiction in general suffers.

Precisely because the majority of Americans hold this extreme view, the novel and fiction is more relevant than ever. It can provide the psychological and philosophical examination of our values, of our politics, of our very being, that is otherwise lacking in our lives. Unfortunately, a marketplace mentality has crept into fiction. Too often, our literary works are for an insular audience, a small percentage of the educated class that reads such stuff. If you want to survive as a writer of it, you write for your audience, whether it be to sell books or to garner that college professorship. This may be making literary fiction intellectually less accessible than ever before.

Q: Where did you come up with the idea for Windmill?

The central motif of the windmill came first. I grew up in the country where every farm had an old windmill. As a young child, how the windmill’s whirling blades reflected light always fascinated me. Before writing the book, I thought of how the blades were a perfect metaphor for a family – all of its members are connected but reflect upon the world in slightly different ways. While the blades on a real windmill are held in place with machine parts, family members have to find their own ways psychologically to create balance and order for them to continue together. Peter, Carl and Lyle Steinar have found a tenuous balance as they spin through life. Throw the proverbial monkey wrench into a real windmill, of course, and the blades will break and the machine stops working. Abbie Blaire is the monkey wrench in the Steinar family. Once that idea congealed in my head, the story naturally unfolded.

Q: How did you go about writing this novel?

I began outlining a general plot for the entire novel and then focused on each chapter, further outlining it beat by beat by having the characters press forward with their motivations and ensuring that in doing so they came into conflict with one another so that this tenuous balance that existed before Abbie arrived always was tested and stretched to its limit. I spent hours developing potential images and lines of dialogue that might be used with each beat. Then I’d write a chapter, starting with the prologue and moving chronologically through the novel. At the same time, I’d spend hours looking at images of the landscape and people from the region where the novel is set and write descriptive paragraphs about the place or character based on those photos or paintings. If the paragraphs fit, I’d incorporate them into the storyline. Even if they didn’t fit, doing that extra writing gave me a stronger sense of place so that as I wrote the novel, I was “living” in the same community as the Steinar family.

Q: What was the most difficult part of Windmill to write?

The ending. Giving my characters motivations and finding events that cause them to come into conflict with one another was easy enough. But how do you resolve these issues? I eventually had to tell myself that I couldn’t neatly sew up the tears between these characters like a television melodrama does but instead had to take the Shakespearian route and kill off a character or two to reach a resolution. Perhaps part of the problem when I was working on this novel is that writing often is a matter of self-discovery for the author, and I simply hadn’t discovered the solutions myself! Sometimes to resolve a problem, I found, you simply have to let go. And so I let go of a character or two, and the ending came.

Q: You’ve written and published short stories. Which is more difficult to write, the short story or the novel?

Both! I like short stories because they are very compact and focused. Unfortunately, they’re also very limiting; a novel allows you to take on larger themes and to travel a number of side roads on the way to your destination. Novels take longer to write simply because there are so many more words to get on a page, though, and I’m impatient. Due to this breadth and the word count, novels demand a lot more dedication and constant attention for several months. Personally, I’d say the novel is more difficult to write, but not knowing exactly how to write that next scene is much more likely a problem in a short story I’m writing as opposed to a novel I’m working on.

Q: What parts of Windmill are real – that is, based on actual events?

In terms of the major events that shape the characters – a mother who dies, a father who tries to commit suicide, a decision to stay where one doesn’t want to – none of that ever happened to me. However, the emotions of those characters – dealing with death, contemplating the value of one’s existence, fear of a loved one committing suicide, feeling trapped – those are very real, actual concerns of my life. Perhaps the most “real” events of the book are Abbie’s experience as a reporter, all drawn from my time as a cub reporter for a small town daily newspaper straight out of college.

Q: Sometimes a character in the novel is really just a proxy for the author. Is that so in Windmill? And if so which character would it be?

Saying Peter, the novel’s main character, is me would be easy. But each of the four main characters in this novel are bits of me and bits of lots of other people. The older brother who wonders if there wasn’t something more out there for him that is Peter is me. The cub reporter that is Abbie is me. The man who thinks he must put his own dreams on hold to care for another that is Lyle is me. The man who wonders if there’s any point in continuing on when all of the loneliness and meaninglessness of existence catches up with you that is Carl, well I’ve sometimes had those thoughts, too. Elements of each of the characters are proxies for me, but no one is wholly me or anyone else.

Q: Who are your favorite novelists and authors?

I’ll read anything and anyone that is interesting. Over the years, the books that have most influenced my writing style tend to be from the mid 20th century; among them are Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,” Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” If I wrote a book half as good as any one of those, I’d be proud. Larry Watson, author of “Montana, 1948,” was an instructor of mine while I was earning my master’s degree and so was very influential. During the past decade, Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” particularly made an impression on me. A novelist shouldn’t limit himself to just reading novels, though. The poetry of Dylan Thomas in my youth and as of late that of Pablo Neruda have affected my writing style. The brilliant symbolism and plotting of Shakespeare’s many tragedies always will remain with me as well.

Q: What is your next novel about?

I have so many ideas for novels and a few even started that I’m not certain which one will be my next. I’ve been toying with a novel about how we can't sacrifice our values in the name of preserving those values, probably set in a west-central Wisconsin town. My next published books, though, almost certainly will be guides to writing and a continuation of my Hikes with Tykes guidebooks. While penning those, I’ll tend to some of my novels and see which one sprouts.