Sept. 5, 2024
A WRITER'S LIFE LINDA QUENNEC
Curious how family stories shape a writer's voice? Join us with Linda Quennec as we explore her novel Fishing for Birds. Influenced by her grandmother’s life and British Columbia’s coast, Linda's work reflects her rich heritage. She shares her journey from student to writer, inspired by family tales and classic stories.
We'll discuss the highs and lows of writing, from rejection to creating memorable characters like Kate, Nora, and Rachel. Linda also talks about tackling themes of grief and how her academic background influences her writing. If you’re into writing or love a great story, this episode is packed with insights.
https://www.lindaquenneccounselling.com
https://a.co/d/aNhxqF0
https://a.co/d/8gD2Dkw
https://www.inanna.ca/product/fishing-birds/
Chapters
00:15 - A Writer's Life
16:35 - The Writer's Fictional Exploration
25:04 - Exploring Creativity and Writing Process
Transcript
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Welcome listeners to A Writer's Life.
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I'm your host Heige Boehm, the author of the novel Secrets in the Shadows.
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A Writer's Life is a place where I'll be in conversation with fellow writers.
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We'll discuss all things writing, they'll read from their latest works and we'll explore what happens beyond the pen in A Writer's Life.
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It's going to be a page-turner.
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I just know it.
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Pull up a chair and join us.
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I'm recording on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nation.
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There is a young woman named Kate who's been recently widowed and she's gone off to a small island in the Salish Sea and there's her mother, nora, who is a little bit tough to take sometimes.
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She has strong opinions about a lot of things and a bit of a gruff way of going throughout her life, and the section that I'm going to read here is Nora's section.
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Welcome listeners to another episode of A Writer's Life.
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Today I'm thrilled to be in conversation with Linda Quennec, who is a writer, educator and PhD candidate in the depth psychology.
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An island dweller at heart, she took inspiration for her novel Fishing for Birds from the natural beauty of coastal British Columbia and the fascinating Isle de la Juventus, where her German grandmother was raised.
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Linda holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in depth psychology.
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She's also a graduate of the writer's studio at Simon Fraser University and the Humber School of Writing.
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She lives with her family just outside of Vancouver, british Columbia.
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Welcome, linda, to A Writer's Life.
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Thank you, Haiga.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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Wonderful.
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Where were you born and what was it like around your dinner table when you were growing up as a child?
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Well, I was born in a very, very small town in Ontario, which I don't remember at all because my family moved to BC when I was about seven.
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But around the dinner table, I would say noisy and messy.
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I would say noisy and messy.
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I often say that I was.
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I come from a lineage of orphans and yarn spinners, so on my father's side were the orphans and on my mother's side were the yarn spinners.
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I had all these uncles who were fishermen and, true to the nature of that profession, they loved to tell stories and often they'd get so excited about it that they would be flailing about and falling on the floor and that was really, really fascinating to me.
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My mother, too, was a storyteller.
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She won.
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She loves to tell the story about how she won a contest when she was a child.
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She loves to tell the story about how she won a contest when she was a child, living in a small town, and she won a bicycle and they had a parade for her and she got to receive all this glory because there are not so many people in the town, so it was a big.
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But yeah, there were stories told, there was not very good manners and yeah, yeah, we were kind of a down to earth family, I would say you are a family of storytellers.
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Did you know very early on that you would to be a storyteller?
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Yeah, yeah, I feel like it was the only thing that I was good at in elementary school.
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I would be zoned out half the time and the one comment that came in on my report card consistently was Linda is a daydreamer.
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So I, you know I wasn't paying much attention to the other subject areas, particularly math, but when it came to language arts and story writing time, I would just go off and write these never ending stories, and you know my teachers were very encouraging about that, so that was great.
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And I had know my teachers were very encouraging about that, so that was great.
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And I had this sense that I wanted to be a writer.
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My mother, however, told me that my options were to be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary, which was, you know, true to the gender identity of the time, and so I went the teaching route, which I also ended up loving too.
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So those two hats are kind of the ones that I wear and have done for many, many years.
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The stories that you would have been told, the fisherman stories.
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How did those stories influence your writing, that's?
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a good question.
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I've never made any sort of direct connection that way.
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I think I guess off the top of my head, I'd say in terms of cadence and rhythm.
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I mean there was always this oceanic sense to my uncles and all the time they spent at sea and growing up next to the sea.
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So I think these oceanic rhythms and cadences just subliminally entered into the sphere of my writing.
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I would say what were your favorite storybooks when you were a child?
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Yeah, the adventurous stuff.
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I liked Anne of Green Gables because she had the chutzpah, she had, you know, a real character and she could fight back against the status quo and I really have always admired characters who could do that.
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So definitely Anna Green Gables.
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A lot of fairy tales, a lot of fairy tales, and I think that's what got me into depth psychology, because there's this vein of, you know, this archetypal vein of fairy tales and how they exist in our lives on fundamental levels.
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So definitely those Poetry wrote a lot of angsty poetry going into my teenage years, very, very bad.
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I'm watching my kids do the same right now, although there's this much better quality than what I came up with.
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Oh, that's great.
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I remember doing that as a kid with.
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Oh, that's great, I remember doing that as a kid and it was like the shimmering stars twinkling on the glistening ocean front.
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A lot of gerunds, yeah, a lot of that's the best.
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my mother's stories and where I grew up had a huge impact on me and my writing, and you say in your bio that you took inspiration from nature and from the island where your grandmother was raised.
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Can you speak about that?
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Absolutely so.
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My grandmother, she had this whole life in Cuba.
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Many of my uncles were born there as well.
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My mother was not, but she immigrated from there to northern Manitoba, which was an incredible amount of hardship for her, yeah, learning how to grow things.
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They didn't have money back then, of course, so she had to learn real survival techniques.
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And then she moved to the island and I kind of grew up with her.
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She would look after me after school and she loved to repeat herself.
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I think this runs in the family because I noticed I'm doing the same in my work but she would repeat the same anecdotes over and over again.
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So some things in my book.
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But she would repeat the same anecdotes over and over again.
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So some things in my book, like the hurricane she experienced that in 1926.
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It was an actual hurricane and she knew about these two guys who crawled into barrels and got rolled around by the wind.
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The chickens on their family farm were flattened against the ground in the morning.
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She thought that they were dead, but then they just kind of got up and fluffed themselves up and kept going.
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So these little anecdotes were pervasive in my childhood and I just thought they were so great and I.
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They came up when I was writing my story.
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I won't say I built my story around them, but because I really was fascinated by this location, this island south of Cuba where she grew up, and I wanted part of the story to take place there, it just happened, naturally, nice.
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I know, when I listened to my mom's stories, I always grew up with them as a child and what happened was, as I started writing my novel, I started interviewing my mom and I learned a deeper part of who she was.
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I started writing my novel, I started interviewing my mom and I learned a deeper part of who she was.
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I was able to understand her as a human, as a mother, as a daughter all these different layers to what a person has and it made me feel more connected to her because I was able to understand her.
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Did you have an opportunity to talk to your grandmother about what you were doing in your writing?
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Unfortunately not.
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She had already passed by the time I started writing.
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I did have her journals on hand, which was a real boon, and you know enjoyed sinking into her stories and who she was.
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That was definitely a part of it.
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So I understand what you're saying.
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Having done this exercise of writing the novel and not having her present, I've since realized that while my mom is still here, I need to do the same thing.
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So, as you say, it's such a meaningful experience to have that conversation together and oftentimes you'll hear things that you've never heard before.
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So I started to do that with my mother a little bit and I don't know if that will end up in my novel writing.
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It was more for the purposes of an assignment.
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In becoming a therapist, which is going to be my career move, you have to investigate your own family, and so we had an interesting experience on this last assignment and I'm not going to let her read it, though I had to analyze her, I had to analyze the whole family.
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Nobody gets to read it.
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Every time I ask my mom, she does have these other veins that she goes off on and I go.
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I never heard that part and I feel that the more you actually ask questions and they repeat the story over and over, it gets deeper and deeper and new things emerge, because I think it triggers their memory and they just go on and it's so valuable for me.
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What I've discovered is it's actually as a child.
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I was a very quiet kid growing up and because I listened so much to my mom's stories and now it's finding its way into my work, I actually thought oh my gosh, it's my mom's stories that have given voice to me.
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Oh, that's beautiful.
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I love the way you put that.
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It's just wonderful to do that.
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So I would just say record your mom as much as possible.
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It's so wonderful to do, and I think it gives them this thing of wow, somebody's actually listening to me, Someone's actually hearing me.
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That's really important when you talk about the voice as well, because I often do this through writing, but once somebody is gone, you really miss their voice.
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You know to have that integrity.
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Definitely so.
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You had said you had always known you wanted to be a writer.
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What inspired you to study depth psychology?
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intended, but I will say that there is such a huge connection.
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So, going back to my first university experience, I started off doing I was going to major in psychology.
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That was going to be my job that pays, while writing was going to be the thing I did on the side, because everyone told me that's a ridiculous idea, you'll never make any money.
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So my real job was going to be as a psychologist.
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But then, as I took my psychology courses, I thought, oh, they're just trying so hard to quantify everything.
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They're just really trying hard to be a science.
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And at the same time I'd taken a few courses in English literature and I felt that I was learning way more about the human psyche in those classes.
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So I ended up majoring in English literature instead and putting the psychology idea aside.
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But then it came back.
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Within the last five years I got the idea that being in school helps me complete projects.
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So I did an MFA and that resulted in my novel.
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And maybe I need to do another degree to result in another completed work, because people will make me do it and I'll have deadlines.
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And I thought you know, depth psychology is this one area of psychology that really allows for the humanities to come in.
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That says yes, that there is a lot to be gained from neuroscience, from the scientific field of psychology tremendous wealth there but also from religion, the arts, writing, music all of this is encompassed in depth psychology, so it just complements a writing life so beautifully I would imagine that you would be able to layer your characters much more so, because you are going into the psyche of of them, of who they are, those layers that we all are, and what a great way to explore a deeper part of humanity absolutely, I mean I hope so.
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This is the aspiration.
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We'll see how it can well I find it really fascinating.
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Actually, I didn't even know what depth psychology was, so that's like now I have to Google it and find out more about it.
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Thanks, In case you didn't have enough to do.
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Exactly writing you had published and who published it.
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So the first piece of writing I had published was a very bad poem.
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Did you win a bike?
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for it.
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I didn't win anything.
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In fact it was kind of funny because it was published in the newspaper of my college at the time and it was published under somebody else's name.
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And at first my reaction was well, that's really exciting, they actually published.
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This is the first thing I've seen of mine in print.
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Oh, but that's somebody else's name.
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But then I thought, well, maybe this is kind of good, because if people don't like it, they don't think it's mine.
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So that was my dubious entree into the world of publishing but why did they publish it under another name?
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I don't know.
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I never even contested it, I never looked into it.
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I just decided that it was a way of kind of half coming out into the world of publishing.
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My words were out there, but I didn't have to take ownership.
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It felt a little sweet, I guess.
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What was it like for you when you finished your novel and then trying to get it published?
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What was that journey like for you?
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Well, it had been sitting on my computer for a while because I had started my first year of my PhD program and I thought I really should do something with this.
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I love the story, I love the characters.
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They were with me for so long and they were very real to me.
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So I started trying out the agent route and then I just I need to get a little bit more dedicated with this aspect of querying, because I just lost the desire to continue with that.
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And then I thought, well, I'm going to go with small publishers and had some really nice interactions with a few of them, and I had met the ladies at Inanna during the AWP conference, so I felt I had a personal connection to who they were.
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They were just really lovely people and I liked what they were putting out and there was a sense of resonance, even before I approached them, I think.
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So they were definitely on my list and it worked out really well.
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They were fabulous to work with Nice.
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Did you get very many rejection letters and, if so, how did you deal with that?
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Lots, and yeah, I think that's never easy, but you do grow a bit of a thicker skin over time, and it's just, you get one in and okay next.
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My favorite one, though, came from an agent who said I wanted to like this more than I did, which actually really made me laugh, and I thought you know some of these rejection letters.
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They can be fairly creative in and of themselves.
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That reminds me of.
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I used to do pottery and I always sell my work.
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In order to try to get to some of the venues, outdoor markets and such, you have to bring and show your portfolio and I remember bringing some of my pottery to this woman and she goes well, I like the shapes, but I really don't like the colors.
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So it's like the same thing and I thought, okay, well, sorry, you don't like the colors.
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Yeah, you know, I really admire how honest some people can be directly to other people.
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I could never dream of saying that to somebody, but it might be liberating, I don't know.
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Would you read us an excerpt from your novel Fishing for Birds?
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I'd be happy to Okay.
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So just to preface, there are three main characters in this novel.
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There is a young woman named Kate, who's been recently widowed and she's gone off to a small island in the Salish Sea.
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And there's her mother, nora, who is a little bit tough to take sometimes.
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She has strong opinions about a lot of things and a bit of a gruff way of going throughout her life, and the section that I'm going to read here is Nora's section.
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And yeah, I'll just jump right into it.
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Nora, they all hover at the pocked and weathered pedestal table in Nora's kitchen.
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Outside, the sun must be sinking, but it's hard to tell beneath the shroud of winter.
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Nora looks at her husband, hunched over dinner, with one eye on the newspaper.
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She can't remember when the four of them last sat together.
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Mom, I'm sorry, but I don't think I can eat this.
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Rachel holds her fork midair, scrutinizing the meat.
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What's the problem?
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Nora sighs?
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You told me you weren't a vegetarian anymore.
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I saw you eat fish at that sushi place.
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It's not that, it's just.
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It's chicken.
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So In a quiche.
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Would you care to enlighten me?
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Just think about it, mom.
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The quiche is made with eggs, you know, laid by chickens, and there's chicken meat swimming around in it.
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It is not swimming.
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I cooked this thing a good 50 minutes, just like the recipe said.
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I'm not talking about the texture.
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I just can't eat both ends of the life cycle all mixed together in one pie.
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Technically, a life cycle has no ends, kate adds.
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Ed throws his fork fork down.
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Would you two just close your mouths and eat what your mother made for you?
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Never mind.
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Nora's lips form a tight line.
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She picks up rachel's plate and walks it over to the garbage can.
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Mom.
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The quiche slides easily from its plate and in a quick flash nora's out door.
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She silences the shouted protests quickly with a slam.
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I am not going to cry.
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She shakes her head and wipes the corners of her eyes.
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It isn't raining, so unfortunately there are lots of nosy assholes out walking around with nothing better to do than speculate about other people's business.
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She wonders about the people behind the neighborhood doors.
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Are their kids this ungrateful?
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She'll never know.
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We all hold our secrets dear.
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It had taken weeks to figure out what to cook for them, and still this.
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She thinks about the girls when they were little, how they respected their mother.
00:20:35.012 --> 00:20:36.095
She'd seen to that.
00:20:36.095 --> 00:20:46.753
Now neither of them knows how to talk to the other, and they're endlessly changing their minds about things, always on some soapbox or another, then switching to a completely different one in the space of as little as a day.
00:20:46.753 --> 00:20:51.366
Is it possible to have nothing at all in common with your kids, she wonders.
00:20:51.366 --> 00:20:57.125
As Nora trudges below the skies, deepening gray, an idea starts to squirm inside of her.
00:20:57.125 --> 00:21:00.198
It has something not unlike delight attached to it.
00:21:00.198 --> 00:21:02.526
This will not be a typical Christmas.
00:21:02.526 --> 00:21:03.547
I'll stop there.
00:21:03.988 --> 00:21:05.369
That was wonderful.
00:21:05.369 --> 00:21:07.192
Thank you for reading that.
00:21:07.192 --> 00:21:12.118
Thank you Are any of the characters built on people you know?
00:21:14.404 --> 00:21:17.807
I'll never say.
00:21:17.807 --> 00:21:30.377
I like to say that they all kind of emerged from my perhaps multiple personality disorder issues, but there's a little bit of me in each of them.
00:21:30.377 --> 00:21:47.646
And then, in order to get Nora, I wanted a certain voice that I'd heard growing up, just a certain really earthy, simple kind of voice.
00:21:47.646 --> 00:21:48.969
So she's a bit of a combination, I'd say, and I'd say they all are.
00:21:48.969 --> 00:21:55.200
But Kate just showed up and Nora just showed up of their own accord when they introduced themselves to me and Nora rather rudely actually.
00:21:58.625 --> 00:22:05.058
I did weave some of my childhood games with my sisters into my novel.
00:22:05.058 --> 00:22:07.092
Did you do anything like that in yours?
00:22:08.145 --> 00:22:13.198
Just some of the particular quirks of the really strange little hometown that I grew up in.
00:22:13.198 --> 00:22:31.125
So I wouldn't say not that I remember any games, but yeah, there were certain particularities of the hometown that I grew up in, like just weird things that people would do and things that people would get grouchy about, and you know the grocery store that everybody went to and everybody knew the owner.
00:22:31.125 --> 00:22:37.346
The town has grown a lot since then, so I'm sure there's nothing resembling this, but it was.
00:22:37.346 --> 00:22:39.032
It was really a small town at the time.
00:22:40.164 --> 00:22:45.075
So interesting how your own personal experiences come through in your writing.
00:22:45.075 --> 00:23:21.218
You know, somebody was saying I tend to write a lot about, well, kind of hard subject matters at World War II, and it's just I think, okay, how do I go into that, writing about grief or death, and I think I tap into my own life and then expand on it, make it bigger than what it really was, and then in turn I find that that really helps myself to deal with situations that I thought I might not have dealt with, that I thought I did deal with and actually I didn't.
00:23:21.218 --> 00:23:37.815
And now I get to explore that much more in writing and fictionalizing it, making it bigger, and I think by doing that then I can see the issues at hand of whatever that situation was much clearer, in a way, and almost kind of removed myself from it.
00:23:37.815 --> 00:23:40.278
You know, that's what I find.
00:23:40.278 --> 00:23:42.068
Do you do anything like that in your work?
00:23:43.231 --> 00:23:43.613
Yeah.
00:23:43.613 --> 00:24:01.092
So it's sort of moving from that subjective to the objective realm, where you tap into your own empathic connections to the work and the characters and the situation that they're in, and then you grow it and you're doing the research after that, so you make it bigger and more connective.
00:24:01.092 --> 00:24:10.647
Yeah, and that also reminds me of something that somebody said to me yesterday which I think is very true it's that you never really know or understand something until you teach it to others.
00:24:10.647 --> 00:24:16.911
And I think you can also say you never really know or understand it until you write about it or, you know, fictionalize it.
00:24:16.911 --> 00:24:20.478
That's another way of metabolizing all of this.
00:24:21.464 --> 00:24:40.096
So I'm really, really interested in what's called narrative therapy and I've done some training in this and it's about helping people to uncover the hidden narratives of their own lives in order to empower them to move forward with whatever seems to be the challenge at the time.
00:24:40.096 --> 00:24:47.878
So maybe there's just this other way that they're not looking at something and you can get to that through a storytelling kind of lens.
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