By Caroline Watling
Heather compares writing novels to the discipline of learning music; there are mistakes and growing pains, but you get better with practice. Even over our zoom interview, Heather’s down to earth and upbeat nature stood out and made it a lovely chance to learn about her work.
When Heather began writing it was on a whim, a strange thing to do on a whim she acknowledges. From conception to publishing, her first novel Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo took three years, but she enjoyed it so much that she had written two more novels between finishing writing her first book and publishing it. The enjoyment, paired with the positive feedback from readers had set Heather on her path as a novelist, publishing 21 novels since 2008.
Over her 15 years as a novelist, Heather has done a lot of work to develop her creation process. She begins her process with a “ramblings file” where she types things that come to mind while thinking about the upcoming novel. These files are no small feat, her last one was almost 50 000 words, or half the length of the novel! She takes the vague ideas and cool concepts in the ramblings file, and finds the pieces that work best until the “amorphous blob” comes together. From there she makes a scene list and writes the novels scene by scene. However as in all art sometimes the ideas we start with, aren’t the same as the final product, on this, Heather says:
“If the book decides it wants to change, I will go with it, I know that’s what the story wants. I try to listen to what’s happening with the story. I have to listen to it. I get this weird sick feeling in my lower chest if I’ve gotten something wrong. When I do, I have to go back, and figure out what I’ve done wrong.”
There’s been times in Heather’s writing career where she remembers specifically not knowing what the plot of the novel would be, but she decided to start typing, she kept typing, and all of a sudden it happened, the plot points came together. She describes it as the coolest feeling, because she doesn’t know who did it, or know where it came from, she only asks that whoever did it comes back, because they’re awesome!
“The best [instance of this] is All At Sea, where the protagonist, an author, is trying to think of how to end her book. I didn’t know how to end her book either, so we both put our hands on the keyboard and wrote the thing. It sounds so weird, but it was so cool, and she finished, and I was like yup that’s how she needed to end that book, and the character agreed that that’s how she needed to end that book.”
While sometimes Heather’s work is inspired by an unknown force, her collection of work is inspired by all sorts of things. Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo was just inspired, the novelist took the idea that her husband was away, and thought what else could happen? Seven Exes are Eight Too Many meanwhile, was inspired by a commercial for survivor, Heather thought “the only thing worse than being dumped on survivor would be being dumped with all your exes”, she thought oh that’s a book and it turned into 3 books. Game of Pies was referenced someplace, and she thought she could make a book about that. It varies book by book. Sometimes it begins by asking what is interesting to me right now.
“Right now,” the author says, “the big question is do I want to talk about the pandemic? No, because it’s not done yet. We don’t quite know how it’s going to end, and I think it’s nicer to have an escape right now than to be hit over the head with more pandemic. We all know it’s here. I don’t need to include it in my books. At this point I’m not writing about it. That’s odd too because I’m thinking about the pandemic every day, so how do you not incorporate it. But I’m trying not to.”
To readers, and to Heather, her books offer a safe place of escape. Heather finds that in writing you solve the problems within the book, eventually all the problems will be figured out, and there is great comfort in that. It lets the author solve a small problem, as opposed to the whole world.
These are real people, and I’ve changed their lives. Its the coolest feeling that, whenever I start thinking maybe this isn’t worthwhile, I think of this and it is worthwhile because stories make such a big difference. Even if all they do is let you escape the pandemic for three hours thats pretty good, I’ll take that too. It’s so nice to just have that break, I’ve had a number of emails from english majors who say I have to read some pretty heavy stuff, and I read you for a break. I think thats amazing, partly because its a break, and partly because an english major doesnt hate them, and I like that too. So I’m doing something right.
Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. -Andy Warhol.
