Nicholas Sparks at home in New Bern, N.C., on Sept. 13.MIKE BELLEME/The New York Times News Service
When American novelist Nicholas Sparks sat down to write his latest book, he began with a single mental image: an old man, hurt in the forest, with his dog standing over him.
“I didn’t know who he was, why he was hurt, what’s up with the dog,” says Sparks, who played with several different answers to these questions in the off-page prep he always does before setting down a single word. “I have to know certain things about the character heading into the story – their age, their general history, where are they mentally, emotionally, physically at this point,” he says. “I have to know the beginning, the middle, the end, and four or five plot-turning points in the story. Then I begin to write, and some of the details come out in the course of writing.”
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In time, this became Counting Miracles, the 23rd in Sparks’s unbroken line of internationally bestselling novels. He’s had the sort of success – more than 115 million copies sold, translated into over 50 languages, multiple blockbuster film adaptations – that means he’s really not being immodest or churlish when he replies, “No, not really,” when asked if he feels like any of his many books hasn’t quite got the attention it deserved.
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For Sparks, being a “bestselling author” means as much to him as any of the other ways you might describe him: a man, resident of North Carolina, father of five.
“Early on, before The Notebook was published, hitting the bestseller list was my hope, but I can’t say it was my expectation,” says Sparks in reference to his wildly popular first novel, published in 1996 after he received a million-dollar advance for the romantic saga. “It’s a hope, but less for the title and more for what it implies, that there are many people out there reading the novel that I have written. And that’s important to me, in the same way that the films are important to me.”
As he points out, a relatively low number of Americans (15 per cent by his reckoning) read one book a year, but many more will watch a movie. “That’s great, because I write a story because I think it’s worthy of being enjoyed,” Sparks says, before adding that “while it reads very efficiently on the surface, a lot goes into a work of fiction like mine.”
The Globe and Mail spoke with Sparks about how his latest story evolved, the legacy of The Notebook and why he’s proud to write tear-jerkers.
Spoiler alert, but did you know when you started writing that Jasper, the old man in the forest who lost his whole family in a terrible tragedy, wouldn’t end up being as alone in the world as he thought? That Tanner [a man passing through town] would turn out to be his grandson?
I knew that was coming from the moment I started writing, of course. And I knew some elements of Tanner’s character, which were drawn from my cousin Todd, who served in the military. He was in the early stages of the Afghan war, he finished his service in 2005 and went to college to become a social worker with the idea of working with veterans. As I talked to him over the past 20 years, a lot of his buddies he fought with have committed suicide in the aftermath. I wanted to speak to that. How does one handle life when a number of the people you’re close to commit suicide?
That’s mirrored in Jasper’s story, where he’s lost so many of the people that were close to him. Were you exploring that idea from two sides?
That’s one of the themes – how does one process grief? I’m someone who lost my mother, my father, my younger sister in a seven-year span beginning when I was 23. What I learned in losing those I was close to is that there’s no rule book, there’s no guide book, and people process grief in different ways. I have a brother, and he became very ‘live for the moment’ in the aftermath of these deaths. I became just, ‘Put your foot down and work,’ because I had children, and I had to make sure they’d be okay if anything happens to me.
It’s interesting that you bring up grief, because for many people your books are tremendously cathartic. If there’s a word that gets attached to a Nicholas Sparks book, it’s ‘tear-jerker.’ Your material makes people cry! Are you okay with that?
I try to write a novel that makes people feel, and I believe that love and sadness are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other, because no one lives forever. One-hundred per cent of love stories – whether that’s your partner, your parents, your siblings, your dog – they all come to an end. The greater the love, the greater the loss.
Even though you’ve gone onto tremendous success, your first book, The Notebook, is still your biggest book. Do you feel like you’re chasing that?
It’s my most well-known work, and it’s probably the work I’ll be known for in the long run. It’s probably the largest selling of my work. But, in my mind, I don’t know that it’s my best work. I think Counting Miracles is pretty strong. I’ve been on quite a roll recently – The Wish is pretty strong, Every Breath is pretty strong. All of those were a lot more technically challenging as a writer to put together than The Notebook was. I have a sense of pride about all those novels as well. Counting Miracles, in some ways, is a modern retelling of the Book of Job, and The Wish is a bit of a Christmas story, something I’ve never done before. I tend to think that each and every novel I’ve written is the maximum capacity of my ability at that moment in time, and I write for that reason.
How do you feel when people call your books ‘romances’?
I would agree that there are romantic elements in my novels, but I don’t think I would characterize Counting Miracles as a romance novel, or The Wish, or Safe Haven. They have other themes that override the romantic slant of things. Counting Miracles is a story about grief, about finding where you belong in the world and, oh yeah, there are some romantic elements in the story.
Do you think your audience would forgive you if you wrote a book that was devoid of even a breath of romance?
No! And I’m okay with that. The neat thing about the world in which I work is that I’m allowed to explore elements of other genres. For instance, in Safe Haven you had love and the supernatural. In See Me, you had love and danger. I can incorporate a number of other things in the work that take advantage of the best things in other genres.
So we’re never getting a Nicholas Sparks book that doesn’t have, if not a happy ending, a hopeful ending?
My novels end with a sense of hope, and part of that is learned. As I said, I pretty much lost my family when I was in my 20s, and it was hard. For those who are still around, life goes on and we have to make the best of it – and that’s possible.