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Other Maps (Novel)

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The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Rebecca Morris – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love.

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page.

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state.

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I have another Canadian author here with me today. Rebecca Morris is the author of Other Maps, which came out last year in September 2024 with Linda Leith Publishing. She is formerly from Guelph, Ontario, but now lives in Montreal for, well, quite a long time. And she's won quite a lot of awards for her short fiction here in Canada. And she currently teaches workshops on writing and creativity for youth and adults and also does the manuscript evaluations and coaching  for both emerging and published writers. Welcome, Rebecca. So glad you're here. 

Rebecca:

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. 

Rhonda:

So let's talk a little bit about the process for you of moving from short fiction to the novel. Did you, how did you go about that? Because I was talking with someone the other day  and they had stopped writing their novel in order to write shorter pieces in order to get that dopamine hit of finishing. So how did you move from short fiction to the novel? 

Rebecca:

I am in a similar boat. When I started writing, I mean, having been, you know, a lifelong reader and but really not not taking myself seriously in that way. When I started writing, it was actually my novel that I began and I always had this vision of like a long form work and I love novels and I wanted to write a novel. So when the characters started coming to me, I was like, of course, this is a novel. 

And I worked on that  mostly on my own for a couple of years. And then it just really became apparent that there was so much that I didn't know about structure, about  how to make characters come to life, how to actually tell the kind of story I was trying to tell. And that's when I started uh, turning to, you know, workshops and really studying short fiction. And then of course, the fact that you can finish a short story and see it out in the world in like a couple of months, that's, that's amazing compared to the years it takes with a novel. 

Rhonda:

Yeah, absolutely. And so just thinking about the approach to the novel. So your book, Other Maps, how did you  make your decisions around how that book would be structured? So first of all, tell us how it is structured. And then how did you, like, did you think about structuring it any other way? How did you come to your decisions around structure? 

Rebecca:

So that's a great question because it's something I have thought a lot about over the years. When I, I mean, my first draft, which I really think of a first draft as a discovery draft. So there really wasn't structure. It was really just following characters and seeing what happened and what they did. And in fact, the whole, for the first draft or two, I only had one main character who had this friend come in from out of town and they reconnected and  it was all seen through one main character's eyes.

And gradually I realized more and more that this friend who had come back to town, who had clearly been through some trauma and been through some hard things, really had her own story to tell. And I was doing  her a disservice by not letting her tell that story. So I actually was working with a mentor at the time who said, why aren't we hearing Anna's voice? Why do we only hear Helen's voice? And I started writing then from this other character's voice and that opened up the whole book to me.

And the way the book is structured now is every other chapter. Like we really alternate between these two young women who were friends, who become close friends again. And they are not only integral to each other's stories, but they help tell each other's stories  as the book goes on. So  I've worked really hard to balance the action and the emotion. I like literally mapped it out across my wall with colored Post-It notes to make sure that I had a good balance before the book was finished. 

Rhonda:

So it's a dual point of view novel. 

Rebecca:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

What are the challenges of writing a dual point of view novel? 

Rebecca:

I think, especially for me, that the story keeps going no matter who is telling the stories, but you have to always keep both of those characters in mind. And even, so for me, I have these two characters, Helen and Anna, even when it's Helen's perspective and she's thinking whatever she's thinking and doing whatever she's thinking and she may not understand what her friend is going with or what her friend is remembering. I as the writer need to know those things and I need to be able to sometimes in really subtle ways but convey that so that they do both still appear as you know kind of two real almost living and breathing characters who are who are moving through the world of this novel.  

Rhonda:

And the novel is a me too novel. That's some potentially difficult or triggering material, you know, so how do you work with, um, stories where the material itself is tough and you know, folks listening to this podcast, they might be running a memoir with some traumatic material or they might be doing fiction with traumatic material. How do you work with material like that? And kind of keep yourself mentally and emotionally healthy through that whole process. 

Rebecca:

I think there really is both sides of that. There is the side of you as a writer who needs to  really, yeah, be considering the impact on yourself of if you are writing a character or writing  about moments that are really, that are traumatic, I think you do need to take breaks. You need to go for walks. You need to talk about your work. Maybe if you have a partner or somebody that you can kind of help yourself find a little bit of emotional distance at times because it can be just really heart wrenching. Even so, for me, my book is fiction, but ever since it's come out, I have people telling me their own stories, which are sometimes not that far off. And I'm kind of holding space for that. But even when it's fiction, you're trying to convey real feelings. So I think that there is that, just that caveat for any writer working with difficult materials is like, keep, like check in with yourself. 

So like take breaks when you need to take a little space when you need to just in order to be able to serve the material  at the end of the day. And then when you're actually doing the writing I think it's really important to I mean, so for me, I hate books that kind of glide over things. I'm like, this is if some my book is a me too book. If someone has been through this kind of trauma, if they've been through an assault and in my book, this person was blacked out. So she doesn't remember it, but she still has to integrate this and learn about this. And it's really, really difficult. 

And so I myself did a lot of research  and so that I could approach it in the most realistic, but also respectful way, knowing that many people do go through  these traumas and wanting to represent that in a way that felt like not that nobody will ever be triggered by my book, but that at least that felt emotionally honest. And it was about  looking at ways that people can, you know, heal from and move on even from the most difficult  experiences. So I would say, yeah, doing your research, whatever that looks like, and really at the emotional impact  of people who have been through similar experiences. 

Rhonda:

Right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then as you say, what I sometimes think of as extreme self care, like really just taking good care of yourself as you're working with the material.  

Rebecca:

Exactly. 

Rhonda:

So let's talk a little bit about the writing process. I mean, I think I'm hearing from folks right now that they're finding it harder than ever to focus on their writings. So what is your process like and how do you ensure that you can stay focused on your own creative efforts instead of all of the noise in the rest of the world? 

Rebecca:

I mean, it's really challenging. This is a really challenging time to be a creative person, to be a sensitive person, to feel that, yeah, you're blocking out the real world in order to focus on your little project. So even just that, that emotional kind of wrestling that I'm worth it, my work is worth it, it is important. I need to make time for it, I think it is part of that work. And then for me, I will schedule it. So I really try to put it first in my day whenever I can, because I find that, you know, I'm a parent as well, I have other work, as soon as I let the day begin and get into other things, it's much, much harder to pull back into that creative space.

So I would say doing things first off as early as I can in the day. And then I'll often like, I'll start with some free writing, just, you know, the morning pages, Julia Cameron style, get everything out of my mind. And then I'll often break things down into little chunks of time. So I have various timers around that I will use. I try not to use the ones on my phone because  anytime I'm picking up my phone, there's the risk of distraction, but I literally have little like colorful egg timers and I'll move myself into a room, I'll have a pen and paper and I'll have my little egg timer. And even if I get 10 minutes, that will often be enough to get me really into my project and, and able  to get good work done.

Rhonda:

I love that. I also have a good handful of analog timers. Even somewhere, there it is up there. I even have a, you call those that have sand in them, an hourglass. 

Rebecca:

No, exactly. Look, I'll show you. Oh, I have them for like different times. So this one is a 15 minute one. I have one that's like a half hour one. I have like a five minute one. And I feel like for, yeah, it just tricks the brain because you start to get off track and then you're like, Oh no, I've still got sand in that hourglass. I'm going to keep at this. 

Rhonda:

Yeah, I love it. And I think you're right about the phone. There's something so distracting just about even having your phone like, you know, near you as you're doing something. Yeah, absolutely. So, now that you've finished a novel, are you back to the short story or are you thinking of doing another novel? Like, do you have a preferred genre or not really? 

Rebecca:

I think fiction is my preferred genre. So I mean, I have a collection of short stories that I'm querying at the moment, but I am working actually on another novel. And  I think it's, I'm struck, you know, talking again about structure. I think in some ways I'm structuring it as a bunch of short stories where there are four main characters and I'm really trying to kind of go deep and really use a lot of detail on each of their chapters. But then I will move to another, to another character. And in some ways I think that scratching that itch that short stories have  of brevity and of using words in that way. But at the same time It is a big project. It is a novel. 

Rhonda:

And you move from a dual point of view to quadruple point of view. 

Rebecca:

Yes. I promised myself when I was working on Other Maps, my next book is going to be so simple. It's going to be just one person. But I mean, it started out that way. And then you know how it is. Your mind does what it's going to do. And new people became really involved.

Rhonda:

You need to follow it. 

Rebecca:

Yes.

Rhonda:

So let me ask you about the short story collection that you're querying, because something  that folks often ask me about, how did you decide the structure for that? Like, how did you make the decisions about, you know, which stories are in, which stories are out, and then for all the stories that are in, how they were organized into a collection? 

Rebecca:

That was something that I had to work quite hard at. Like, I literally had to take some time and, you know, really think about the structure. For me, I used to be a teacher, like a high school teacher. And I realized kind of looking back and looking through a lot of the stories I'd written that many of them involved either a teenager or some of them were about people who worked in a high school. Some of them were, you know, about parents. And I thought, okay, there's something here tying them together. 

And I live in Montreal, which is a really diverse place. And when I've taught at schools here, they're really diverse places. And I think that's one of, personally, I think that's one of the strengths of a big city like this is you get all this amazing interaction between people from different backgrounds. So, I decided to structure it so that every single story was tied to a fictional high school. 

So as soon as I came up with that idea, I went, had to go back into some of my stories, you know, and adjust some things, but that was quite a fun exercise. And to think, okay, well, how is this one connected? So that's the structure of it is, yeah, all of them are connected to this fictional school. And if it ever gets picked up, if it gets published, hopefully that will, I might even strengthen that more. 

Rhonda:

Love that. Yeah. You worked with an editor at the Linda Leith?

Rebecca:

I did. 

Rhonda:

With an editor on your novel, because I think so often we get so closely tied into our novel, right? And the idea that somebody else might have ideas about it. 

Rebecca:

Yeah, it's scary. 

Rhonda:

It's challenging. So how did you find that experience? 

Rebecca:

I would say I found it very challenging at first. I had worked with a couple of editors at times for short fiction, you know, because different magazines have different protocols. Some just publish as is, some really want to go in there with you. So I, I did struggle, but I started to realize that every single time I was given feedback on my work, I just needed to take a beat. 

Like I realized in myself that my first instinct was going to be very defensive. I was going to be  really horrified and think, oh no, I can't do this. Like that's just my, it's, instead of fighting that I learned like, okay, you know what? That's just, that's normal. That's how you're going to feel. So walk away, give yourself a few hours, give yourself 24 hours you know, have that cup of tea and then come back to it and everything seems less scary after a little bit of time. 

And I mean, my editor was, you know, 95% of the time she was right. So there were once or twice that I would be like, no, no, I really feel strongly about this, but really she, she was right. And she was the best kind of editor in that she was really rigorous and called me on things that weren't working, but she was also really kind and she would tell me when things were working. So it became a really wonderful working relationship. So that I was like really excited to like make her proud with the finished work.

Rhonda:

That sounds ideal. That sounds so, so great. Yeah. So you do creative writing workshops, you do editing support, manuscript evaluations, that kind of thing. What are the biggest issues that people bring to you? Like the people that knock on your door and say, Hey, Rebecca, please help me with my novel or my stories. What are the biggest issues that writers typically bring to you? Writers that haven't published yet? 

Rebecca:

Yeah, I would say it's that sense of being kind of lost in the weeds in their own projects.  They'll often have a really great idea or really clear idea of a main character or a situation or what their book is about. But in terms of how to actually structure it and  have it have a story arc to it that's actually, you know, these are characters that we're like, oh, okay, we can see the change in these characters. We can see, you know, that they have that they have moved through something. 

I always say that, you know, a short and I, I took this from someone else, maybe George Saunders, but  a story has to frame a moment of change. So really helping people to stand back and say, does everything you've got here really need to be here? And  what is the significant moment of change? And how can we take what you've got or rewrite what you've got and really make it, you know, sing out to that reader and stand out to that reader and work for you as well. So I would say the untangling and the clarifying, that's what I'm mostly doing for people.  

Rhonda:

I love that. Yeah, I think that's very true. Sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. 

Rebecca:

Exactly.

Rhonda:

Like you're so lost in your own manuscript and you have no idea what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for chatting with me today, Rebecca. This is really great. 

Rebecca:

Oh, my pleasure.

Rhonda:

I'm going to put a link to your book and your website in the show notes so they know where they can find you. Thanks so much for being here. 

Rebecca:

Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes.

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.