THE TAO OF WRITING
Novel inspired by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu
An Ottawa social worker by day, Wayne Ng took 13 years to write his first novel, which he is launching Tuesday at Octopus Books in the Glebe.
Below, the Toronto-born Nepean resident, 55, who has also penned several award-winning short stories, discusses his latest milestone as a writer, Finding The Way: A Novel Of Lao Tzu.
Q When did writing become a serious pursuit for you, and why?
A I’ve always enjoyed putting pen to paper. As a child, I dreamed of being a journalist. My dream job is still to be a travel writer. I love the creative process, and feel especially gratified stringing words together.
But I got serious about this almost 20 years ago when I took a creative writing course at night with Melanie Fogel, who was, at that time, the editor of Storyteller Magazine. She was an absolute tyrant, but she churned out good writers, some of whom formed into a critiquing and writing group to which I still belong.
My greatest achievement as a writer has been to be able to dedicate my debut novel to my wife, Trish. Everything else is gluten-free gravy. Q How did you make time to write your novel?
A Pull out any of my elementary school report cards and they’ll tell you I’m a daydreamer. Still am. So, in a sense, I spend loads of time associated with the craft. Writing regimes don’t work for me, though I can see that they’re necessary for others. My juicier ideas and thoughts generally flow organically. Contriving a character, a scene, or a setting often seems forced and it shows in my writing. Lao Tzu would be proud to see that I kind of let nature run its course. As a social worker, I talk and listen to kids, adolescents, parents all day long. It’s such a joy to meet such characters. While none are specifically modelled in the novel, they’ve shown me the richness of personalities. And I’ve given some of this back by showing the novel to my students. It’s not a vanity play, but a teachable moment, that from start to finish, after 13 long years of patience, persistence, determination and dreaming, one mustn’t give up. Surprisingly, the students handle the book with awe and reverence, which shows that in this screendriven era, there’s still hope for the written word.
Q What prompted you to fictionalize the story of Lao Tzu?
A I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know much about Lao Tzu until my wife, a librarian, handed me her favourite book, The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff, essentially an interpretation of Lao’s seminal work, Tao te Ching. I wasn’t formally schooled in Taoism, but many Chinese, such as myself, have elements of it through the folk religions we were exposed to, and/or the romantic notions of peace through nature and contemplation. One of the legends of Lao Tzu is him atop a water buffalo, despondent at the moral decay of the world. He wanders toward the outer regions, ready to die. I so fell in love with the notion of an enlightened idealist, one who dreamt of a better world, a just society, but whose idealism was crushed by a harsh reality. From one dreamer to another, I could feel his pain, but also his hopes. A common depiction of Lao Tzu is of him as a venerable, wise old sage, gentle, humorous and all-knowing. I find this rather uni-dimensional. In creating his story, I also saw an opportunity to do something no one else had done, that is to literally fill him out. That enabled me to question much of how I work, live and play. In doing so, I had in essence, discovered Taoism and found my own way. China
is indisputably a world power with a such a rich and important history. That much of the world has an appalling lack of knowledge and understanding of it is short-sighted and Eurocentric, like almost all historical fiction in the West. Yet the prize of understanding the totality of China is not just reconciling whether it’s a friend or foe, but in providing answers to much of what ails us here and now.
Lao Tzu’s the Way/Taoism tells us that our thirst for sanity and simplicity is a quest that transcends culture and time. I believe if he were here today and started to write Tao te Ching all over again, the message wouldn’t be much different. He might have a rant about social media. But his message is as important now as it was then: that even in a time where rulers are unjust, where change is scary, where greed and consumption drive us away from our natural state of balance and harmony — we cannot lose hope.
Q What hopes do you have for this book?
A I’ve had many people already tell me they learned so much about Taoism and ancient Chinese history and they want to know more. And they’ve been hugely entertained. Let’s not forget this is a political thriller wrapped in a philosophical bow. So what more could I hope for?
I also hope people see the value in slowing down, in living in the moment, in accepting what naturally befalls us. The example that illustrates this and Taoism is the tale of the three wise vinegar tasters. Three ancient philosophers sit around drinking vinegar: Confucius says, “This is sour. The people who made this lack structure, order. We must create rules.” Buddha takes a sip and says, “This is bitter, like life, dominated by pain and suffering.” Finally Lao Tzu takes a sip, smiles and says, “It’s vinegar, it’s supposed to be sour.”
Some things are just supposed to be. We spend so much energy creating, destroying, avoiding, and denying things that are meant to be taken as they are.
Q What do you want to do next as a writer?
A I’ve got some elements for a sequel involving a returning character and the author of the Art of War, Sun Tzu. But I’m going to let nature take its course, even if it takes another 13 years. Lao Tzu would be proud.