USask Grad and Sheaf Alumnus Zach Tennent tells all on his latest project.

Born and raised in Saskatoon, Zachary Tennent has lived a life familiar to many USask students. After graduating from high school at Aden Bowman Collegiate Institute, he decided to pursue a degree in History. During his tenure at the University of Saskatchewan, he joined The Sheaf, where he worked as the opinions editor for two years. 

After earning his degree, Tennent moved eastward to Montréal, interested in delving further into the world of writing. Drawing from his previous experiences in writing and his love for cinema, he was inspired to become a film critic and screenplay writer, eventually starting a podcast—Formatted To Fit Your Screen—where he interviews filmmakers and authors and discusses movies. 

Tennent’s latest project is a self-published fiction book titled Therapy Blues, available for purchase on Amazon and in-store at Turning the Tide. 

“It’s about a writer who is trying to learn more about himself, trying to have a journey of self-discovery, and through learning more about himself and going to therapy, he doesn’t necessarily like what he finds out about himself,” says Tennent. 

The book follows the journey of Peter Mills, a young Canadian author both blessed and cursed with success. After his YA novel, The Asimov Principle, becomes a bestseller, Mills finds himself celebrated by teenagers and ridiculed by critics and fellow authors. Worst of all, he is deeply allergic to the Canadian literary scene that insists on parading him around as the newest “voice” of his generation.

Now plagued with imposter syndrome and a deadline for a second novel that he cannot write, Mills spirals into therapy sessions with an eccentric psychoanalyst whose advice toes the line between profound insight and “I can’t believe I’m paying for this.” 

Their sessions push Mills to confront his complicated relationship with his parents, his inflated yet fragile ego and his pathological need to seem like a tortured genius—even if he is only mildly inconvenienced by life, at best.

Outside therapy, Mills stumbles through awkward interactions with fellow authors and teaches creative writing at a Montréal college, where his students idolize him for all the wrong reasons.

The novel takes constant jabs at the Canadian publishing industry, academia and the performance of literary identity. Beneath the humour, it explores loneliness, artistic insecurity, the search for authenticity and the uncomfortable truth that success doesn’t magically fix your psyche. Mills’’ inner conflict forms the book’s emotional core: he yearns to create something meaningful, but can’t stop tripping over his own ego, self-pity and desperate desire to be admired.

The book is equal parts comedy and psychological character study, inviting readers to laugh, cringe and see parts of themselves and tiny bits of their own lives reflected at them in the form of Mills’ existential crisis. 

When asked what inspired him to write the novel, Tennent explains that he wanted to write something real and lighthearted. 

“I think in the current moment, there are a lot of stories out there regarding trauma that are very heavy and aggressive in their messaging and tone. I wanted to tell a story that explores someone who has those same feelings within themselves, but takes the piss out of the situation a little bit and deflates the struggle when we sometimes take it so seriously, with the trauma of our past.” 

Inspired by elements from real life and his own experiences with therapy and living as a small-town boy in the big city, Tennent was itching to start writing Therapy Blues after his first session with a therapist. 

Drawing inspiration from movies and other authors—in particular the film Adaptation by Spike Jonze, and books by Philip Roth and Mordecai Richler—Tennent was initially planning on making the experience into a screenplay, before deciding to publish it as a novel. 

“This book, interestingly, did start out as a screenplay, so readers may find that it, at times, moves a bit like a movie, or it has a bit of that react structure to it. But when it came time to write it as a book, I was mostly looking to preserve the strength of the dialogue, because I always felt that the characters and the way the conversations between the characters in the book propel the story forward was the real strength of it, and the goal in turning it from a script into a book was to not get in the way of the conversations.”

He continued. “Filmmaking is a very expensive and complicated process that involves a lot of people and time and scheduling, and I felt that I didn’t want to have to prove myself to other people to have this story be out there, and I didn’t want to need to wait around for the right person to approve before I could share the story, which is why I ultimately went [the] self publishing [route to have] full control over the project.”

As anyone who has any experience with writing novels and getting them published will tell you, especially independently, it is much like Sisyphus and his boulder—an endless struggle to reach the peak. Upon finally self-publishing his work, Tennent felt immense relief in slaying the beast. 

Working on this book gave Tennent the opportunity to read more, developing skills and efficiency he feels will be useful in future endeavours in writing. Giving me the inside scoop, he tells me that he is currently working on his next novel—a darker fiction influenced by the works of Stephen King, set in Saskatoon. The tentative title is Nutana Split, and Tennent believes readers who enjoyed Therapy Blues will definitely enjoy this one too. 

Looking back on the process of writing the book and becoming a published author, Tennent looks fondly back at his time at The Sheaf. He urges students to write and volunteer if they have something they want to say. 

“Nothing was more instrumental in my development as a writer than my time at The Sheaf, both as a volunteer and then when I worked there. The key to becoming a confident writer is practice and working at it. I don’t know where I would be if not for the time and training I got working with Naomi, Shantelle and everybody else at The Sheaf.”

He recalls the office fondly: its posters, clock and fridge, among many other things. It is with a heavy heart that I have to tell him that the fridge stopped working last week. 

For hopeful future authors and USask students looking to follow a similar career path, Tennent has these words of encouragement: “Practice and have fun, because you’re going to need to practice. So you may as well learn to enjoy it.”