Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• While the Sun is Above Us (Novel)
• The Chorus Beneath Our Feet (Novel)
• Melanie Schnell's Instagram

The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Melanie Schnell – 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'm so excited to have my friend Melanie Schnell with me today. So Melanie's novel, While the Sun is Above Us, was shortlisted for the Fiction Award and Book of the Year Award and won the Saskatchewan First Book Award and the City of Regina Award in 2013. The novel has been listed as part of the ELA A30 curriculum in both public and Catholic schools across Saskatchewan. And she's published long and short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

Her fiction placed second in the City of Regina Awards in 2010 and 2017. She's currently an assistant professor of creative writing, rhetoric and composition at the University of Regina. And she lives in Regina, Saskatchewan. Her current novel is The Chorus Beneath Our Feet. Welcome, Melanie.

Melanie:

Hello.

Rhonda:

Hey. So where did this novel come from? Because I know your previous novel was based on some experience you had in Africa. Where's this one coming from?

Melanie:

Yeah, well, the initial image, the primary image, because it came as an image, came to me when my son was one. He's now 16. So 15 years ago, I was at a writer's retreat outside of Saskatoon and myself and several other writer friends, women, had rented this old kind of rambling farmhouse to stay in to get some writing done.

Rhonda:

Oh, I love that!

Melanie:

And I actually, yeah, it was wonderful. I took my son with me, they allowed the baby, so that was good.  I was working on the final, kind of final drafts of my first novel.  And this image came of two women standing on a tree branch in the middle of this violent storm. And they weren't holding onto anything.

They were just clinging to this branch with their feet. And there was,  the image was really strong, but I didn't have the mental capacity to, I knew it was something. But I didn't have the space at that time to dig into it story-wise. So I drew it. I drew the picture.

Rhonda:

Does the story always come to you with an image? I find that fascinating.

Melanie:

Yeah. So I finished the writing of my first novel and it came out and finished the edits and I still had this picture. And then I went back to the picture. A couple years after my first novel came out and started writing it. And you know how it is with creativity and images and stories. They move ahead without you.

They are their own energetic composition, their own organism, their own thing. And so I came back to it and it changed a little bit. I wasn't sure about the women. I didn't know if the women would be together anymore, but I did know that the tree would be central.

And so I started writing. so really, honestly, that is how it began. And my very strong sense, what I knew immediately the theme would be about what is beneath us, meaning our past, what lies beneath us. You you're always hearing stories about what people have dug up, excavated from the ground. And of course, immediately I thought of ah the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, which I read when it came out in 2015.

And I learned about, you know, we all did about the residential schools and all of those children who died and had unmarked graves, you know, scattered across Canada. And there was, it's not there anymore, you know, a long time ago, there was a Regina Indian Industrial School located just outside of Regina that housed several Indigenous children over the years. And there is an unmarked grave there that they found that they've now turned into a heritage site.

And so I went out there a couple of times after I read the TRC and it just got me to thinking about what's beneath us. And then I heard about, you know, other mass graves. um You know, just more recently, the  children in Ireland, babies in Ireland, skeletons of babies in Ireland were found under the Home for Unwet Mothers.

And then I heard about the British Home Children, which I hadn't known about.  A colleague told me about them. And I knew then once I heard about that, that that is what would, that narrative would become central in my story. And it's kind of thematically connected with fungi, tree roots, you know, that there's so much life beneath us.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So let me ask you about, I want to ask you about Jess, because I loved the character Jess when I read the novel.  And this is, you know, he's a grief stricken soldier. He's come home with his best friend's body after eight years away and then he finds his sister Mary, you know, missing and things kind of go from there. But what role did Jess's past experience as a soldier, you know, how did you decide to work with that? And then how did that impact the novel once you decided?

Melanie:

Well, I'd started with Mary. I mean, I wrote Mary's Voice for years, really. Um, it, then I realized that, um,  she needed someone to ground her. She's so kind of a theory. And amorphous and airy. And I understood because of the British home children narrative and the brother and sister narrative that happens there with the British home children, that it would be a story about not just what's beneath, but connected to that siblings, sibling relationships.

And so you know, Jess came along. knew he was there, he, Mary always had a brother named Jess, but he, kind of nudged his way in more centrally. And so he has a lot of trauma and he's estranged and escaped. He escaped his, his hometown. Cause he, he just couldn't face anything anymore. And so he went and he joined the military and ended up in the war in Afghanistan.

And something needed to bring him back, something needed to force him back home or he would have stayed away forever. And his best friend died on his watch and he was tasked with  accompanying his best friend's body back home to their hometown.

Rhonda:

Okay.  And, um you know, talk a little bit about the setting for the novel and why you know, and how you treated that and any research you did or like,  just really would love to know. I know you, you know, you live in Regina, like, what are you, you live in Saskatchewan, what are you,  yeah, how were you, how were you thinking about the setting given that the tree is such a huge piece of this story?

Melanie:

Well, yeah, Ravenswood is a fictional Regina. It's, you know, it's inspired by, it's definitely inspired by Regina. You know, when I was doing research, I took many walks around Victoria Park and tried to just get a sense of what it's like there because several of my characters live in the Central Park.

And funnily enough, there was a tree, the oldest tree in Regina was cut down just recently. And it's the same age as the Heron tree in my book. And it was in Victoria Park. I thought that was kind of interesting. Um so yeah, the city is kind of around the same size and the, there's a tree there. And so I did, I did think of Regina not, you know.

Rhonda:

Like it wasn’t in your head is like, this is roughly equivalent to Raymond's work.

Melanie:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Love that. So, um, how long did it take you to finish the novel? Like from, from  like, oh, here's this  drawing to, um, you know, a version where you thought, okay, this is good enough to publish now.

Melanie:

Well, it was 15 years. From idea to publication. ah I didn't work on it for many years of those 15 years because I was, you know, life got in the way. was working on the first book.  had a son.  I was a full-time single mother from the get-go.  I was climbing the academic ladder,  which is shaky and tenuous and a lot of work. And I dealt with a long boat about of chronic illness in that where there were a couple years there where I could not read or write properly. So I had to set it aside completely at that time. Yeah. So it just took a really long time.

Rhonda:

Yeah. And when you were working on it, you know, when you were able to focus and concentrate on it, um how did the story morph? Like you talked about like how the story kind of goes before you, but how did the story morph and change as you worked on it?

Melanie:

Oh, it's what's interesting about that is I and I complain about this in an essay I wrote, which I haven't yet published about chronic illness is that one of the most of course chronic illness is a nightmare. But one of the most frustrating thing as an artist with chronic illness is that you can't catch up to your art. So you work on it. It comes through you in a sense. You have it down. And then you have to sleep for a year or a month or a day, you know, a week.

And you can't think. And when you can think and you have a wisp of energy, you go back to it and it's changed without your presence. It's because it's his own thing. And so I felt like I was constantly scrambling to try to catch its tail and bring it back down so that I could put it before me and work on it. But of course, a novel, as you know, needs a lot of stamina.

A lot of energy, a lot of time, a lot of space.  And I had none of those things most of the time. And so I was always trying to play catch up. So finally, um a little bit after the pandemic, I guess I was feeling a bit better. And I, my son was older, actually took a medical leave for a little while from work for a few months. And I did get a lot of writing done then because I didn't have to worry about anything else.

But you know, it just pieced together over time and then the deadlines come and then you have to get it in and then  I did a ton of substantive edits. um You know,  there were  the two women in the tree, like on that branch. Mary is one of the women. The other woman is the narrator in my third novel that I've started. So that's how that happened. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Wow.  One story just sprung off the neck. I love that.

Melanie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Rhonda:

Are they related? They in the same world? They, you know, do they know each other, these characters?

Melanie:

Um Maybe people are, you're not the first person who asked me that at first. My first thought was no, but then, but then I'm thinking, you know how some authors have little Easter eggs of like, one tertiary character in one novel that is like a main character in another. I was kind of thinking, yeah. Like I was thinking about that for this third one, actually. Yeah, yeah.

Rhonda:

You know what bring Mary back. So talk to me a little bit about, um you said you made significant substantive edits. Like at what point did you decide that was required and how did you go about it?

Melanie:

Well, I just knew it wasn't there. Like I couldn't this second book was hard to wrangle. um And I just would write it and I loved it, but just there was something huge missing and I couldn't keep up to it I didn't have the time and the space to figure out what was missing. And then for a while I took out Mary's voice, which now to me is insane, right? To think of that. 

And then I met Michael Morola, my editor. He's the owner uh of co-owner, think, of Wernicke Press.  And he was in Regina as writer in residence at the Regina Public Library. And I took my draft to him. And  he was the first person I had read it, who he understood the whole world of it. And he said, is, if you do this and this and this, this is what is needed.

And something clicked inside of me when he said that. And I went, oh yeah, that's it. I just needed someone. I was in a way too into it at that point. And so he knew where Mary's voice needed to be centered and he knew or he understood what needed to happen at the end where the ending was really messing me up. Right.

I couldn't the ending for my first novel came so organically like it came with a lot of hard work and over a long time, but it felt very natural. And this first one, the ending came kind of right at the end of the of the editing process, but it also is right. Like it's the right ending for the book. It just took longer to get there. 

Rhonda:

I remember us having a conversation at one point about Jess's voice  and whether,  you know, how, how connected the reader might feel to Jess. Was that something that you, worked on a lot?

Melanie:

Yeah, I worked on Jess's voice a lot. When I first started writing him, he came across as way too gruff and angry. And I remember, she, it's the Bernabéar Clay, she passed away several years ago, a really wonderful writer in Regina and a friend of mine. And she went through a very early draft and she, she hated Jess and she loved Mary.

And that was kind of the feedback I was actually getting from a lot of women. And I was real. And then I had, you know, a couple guys look at, you know, just snippets of early drafts they were okay with Jess, but they, you know, some of them thought Mary was kind of a weirdo.

And so I just felt like, okay, it just shows me that neither of them are fully embodied in their own voices yet. And so I felt like Mary was pretty much there right away for me, but Jess took some time. And similarly with my first novel, took me, I mean, ironically, a dude was really immediately there for me. And it took work for me to get Sander's voice down.

But with Jess, you know, I know I feel like I succeeded with his voice in the end because I've talked to several guys I know who are really guy like who really love Jess. Like, you know, they really feel like I got the guy's voice down.

Rhonda:

I like Jess as a character. I did .

Melanie:

Oh did you like it?

Rhonda:

Yeah, I felt like his trauma came across, you know, like I really felt like I captured something about what it's like to be in Afghanistan and then have to, and we're recording this on Remembrance Day, I would like to come back and have to bring back the body of your best friend and all the trauma related to that. So I read him as someone who had this trauma filter on him that he was still working through. So, yeah. Anyway, I've ordered the book. It's on its way. So I'm excited to see. So I'm excited.

Melanie:

I sent you a signed copy. It popped in the mail yesterday.

Rhonda:

Oh you did? Okay. Great. Well, that's fine. I don't mind having two copies. Um, yeah. So I'm looking forward to reading the final, final, final, cause I read it.

Melanie:

I'm curious to know what you'll think after you read it, because I know that you've seen an early, much earlier version.

Rhonda:

Yeah. Yeah. And you've done a lot of work on it since. um, talk to me a little bit about. I'd love to hear a little bit about your revision process and  your mindset during that. Was there ever any point where you were like, I give up, I can't do this? No, can't be done. It's too far. 

Melanie:

Oh yeah, that's my son.

Melanie:

It was a few years ago, my son said to me, mom, you always say this, you always say you're gonna quit writing and then you don't. And then I said, I don't always say that. He's like, well, once every year or two, you'll say, that's it. um And of course I will never quit writing. It's just, I'm just  voicing my frustration.

Rhonda:

Yeah,  at bottom of the road, course. It was a hard one to wrangle, like I said before, you know, ironically, know, my first one um was easier, which is kind of weird because I went and lived in South Sudan and, you know, amidst a war for the first one and the research was quite intense.

So would think that would be the harder one, but this one was harder. And it was because of  me and where I was at  mentally and physically um in my life. So it was just so hard to write it. um And so, yeah, I had several moments where I just said, I don't think I  can do this, but I'd always come back to it because the characters call you back. They do. The story calls you back, whether you like it or not, whether it's going to be published or not.

Rhonda:

Yeah. I know there will be people listening to this who have chronic illness, who write and live with chronic illness. So do you have any um advice or tips or suggestions for someone who hasn't finished a novel yet but would like to but is dealing with chronic illness? How do you make it happen?

Melanie:

You know, it's funny as you ask that. I remember when I was in the depths of, it was Lyme disease that I was diagnosed with when I was in the depths of being  so, so, so sick. If somebody,  if I would have was listening to a podcast and somebody asked somebody else that with chronic illness, I would get so angry and frustrated because I would be like, nothing helps. You don't understand this nightmare.

But at the same time, I wouldn't turn the  podcast off. And I, and I hope they don't because I think you know, I still struggle. still have bad days. I'm certainly better than, what I was. Absolutely. And I expect to get completely 100 % someday. That's my expectation. It was a long, long, long, many years long haul of being very ill. And I think that what one must remember is that you are not your illness.

You are. It's something else entirely that is. And your story is coming from that, the central lit up part of you.  The story is coming from somewhere that is hard to verbalize because it's different for everybody else. For me, the story is coming from a place that wasn't my illness. It was coming from a place deep inside of me. Um, something very, very central that I could still access as an ill person.

Perhaps I couldn't access it consistently or even sometimes for a long time, but it doesn't mean that it disappeared. It's still there. And so to just, you know, I hated the word hope when I was really sick. I hated that word, but I think if you remember, it's going to, that part doesn't leave. It's still there. And it might just be glimpses sometimes. And when that glimpse comes, it's there for you to, to, to it's there to witness what you're bringing forth into the world. 

Rhonda:

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that's true from everyone. There's this sort of central space from which, you know, our creativity flows that we always have, um even when we're not writing, you know, until, as you say, the characters call us back again. And  now we've got to finish it. Is there, I know you've moved on to working on the next book, as you're out in the world promoting this book, is there anything that and think that if you had to go back and do it differently, other than not getting sick, is there anything you'd do differently in the writing of this book?

Melanie:

If you asked me this while I was writing it, I would have said, yes, a million times over. But of course, now that it's over, I look back and I think, well, it'd be nice if it didn't take so long because that's hard on a writer to have such a long time between. It's hard on your confidence. And it's  just, you feel a bit embarrassed.

So I would have been great if it was shorter, but I couldn't help it because I got sick and because I was a single mom and life was...I was doing my best, right? I besides it, you know, taking me three years instead of, I guess, well, idea to publication was 15, but the actual writing of it, I guess, was 13. um And that's, you know, cause my first book came out in 2012. So, yeah, that's, I guess that's,  that's it. 

I love, because of course all that drafting is exploration. And as an artist and a writer and someone who's curious about the world in a way in love with the world. You want to be doing that deep exploration and all that reading and all that research and interviewing people and talking to people. And if it doesn't end up in your book, you know, something about it does that something about it does.

Rhonda:

Yeah totally get that.

Melanie:

Even if it's a holograph, even if it's so faint, no one else can see, right? Because that's experience.

Rhonda:

Yeah, I really can't. You know, you really, you know, it'd be nice if you could go back and say, okay, well, let's just shorten this whole process up. But, you know, at the same time, would you lose anything in the process? You know, that time that you rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, you know,  that was  that was central to the book that is so, 

Melanie:

then it would be a different story would be a different story.

Rhonda:

Would be a different story. It totally would. Yeah. So is it going into the next book? Is there anything thematically that stays? You know you talked about everything that lies beneath. Have you kind of exhausted that now and you're moving on to something new or or is there a thread or it’s new.

Melanie:

It’s new. Besides, you know you have me thinking about Mary being a tertiary character now in that,  in that novel, besides that possibility. um It's, it's, it's new. Yeah, it's something that I've had in, it's been an idea I've had in my head for over a decade as well.

Rhonda:

Oh wow. This one started as an image?

Melanie:

Yeah, it was that other woman on the branch.

Rhonda:

Oh.

Melanie:

And the first scene of the book  is very, it was always very clear to me for well over a decade  for this third novel. And this third novel is the first novel that I've written out of the three that has just one narrator.  So it's really, this one is very close and clear to me. It really feels there. I already started, like I started writing it over the years. I mean, I have about 50 pages. You know, I have a ton of research on it. So it's, I'm well into it. 

Rhonda:

Nice. And does it feel like one narrator, like shrew, like simpler, one, just one voice to cement and get, or, is,  or is it still like, oh my God, it's a novel. we go.

Melanie:

Well, it's a different experience. For me, the one narrator feels just, it's so much closer. um It's so much more intimate.  It's closer to me somehow. And it's, um, Yeah,  simpler,  not easier  in a way, I guess.  But still a novel. Yeah, it's still a novel. But you can't get away from that.

Rhonda:

Yes, it's still a novel. Totally. Yeah. Thanks so much for this conversation today, Melanie. I really, really enjoyed connecting with you and learning about some of the, you know, some of the process that went into this novel over the years. So thank you so much.

Melanie:

Thank you, Rhonda. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for asking me to be on your podcast.

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. 

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