Tag: Writing

Interviews

Interview with Jack Stilborn

Pauline Shen

In this post, we’ll be hearing from Canadian author Jack Stilborn. Check out his bio:

Jack Stilborn lives in Ottawa, Canada, and writes fiction and short stories. The Tyranny of Good Intentions, his debut novel about love, death and a great deal of politics on a condominium board, is now available from Chicken House Press.

Photo Credit: South March Studio, Kanata, ON

He showed early promise with a comic story that made a cousin laugh so hard she threw up. He was then deflected by studies (double major in political science and English literature at the University of Saskatchewan; politics and philosophy B.A. at Oxford University; PhD. with dissertation on the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville at Western University). After that came life as a policy research analyst (Parliament), intergovernmental affairs advisor (Ontario government) and public servant (Ottawa). He also enjoys cycling, kayaking and (recently) cold water swimming; family life (Alex, Jessica, Christine and partner Linda); participating on volunteer boards and lots of reading, especially literary fiction and history.

Jack, tell us how the concept for your debut novel The Tyranny of Good Intentions came about. What helped propel you forward to finish the manuscript?

I have served on several condo boards of directors, as well as other volunteer boards. I started doing this while still working on my long-term day job as a research analyst working for Parliament (federalism and parliamentary governance issues). At a certain point, the light went on and I realized how much of national political life is captured in relations and behavior on these smaller boards. I was propelled forward because writing was a pleasure for me, perhaps an escape. Also by curiosity about how Andrew, the protagonist, would deal with challenges that are part of democratic citizenship.

The novel’s protagonist, Andrew Walmer, suddenly finds himself roped into a microcosm of our own societal landscape. What difficulties did you experience while constructing the plot? Did you have doubts while writing the draft?

Continue reading “Interview with Jack Stilborn” →
Interviews

Interview with Merilyn Simonds

Pauline Shen

In this post, we’ll be hearing from Canadian author Merilyn Simonds. She shares with us her inspirations, describes her writing process, and gives us a sneak peek into her next work in progress! Check out her author bio:

Merilyn Simonds is the internationally published author of 22 books, including the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the Canadian classic nonfiction novel, The Convict Lover, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Among her best-selling nonfiction is A New Leaf, the story of her gardens north of Kingston, and Gutenberg’s Fingerprint, a meditation on reading, writing, and the future of the printed book. Her most recent book—Woman, Watching, whichwon the Foreword Indies Editor’s Choice Nonfiction Award for 2022—is an innovative memoir/biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, an extraordinary recluse who changed the way we see birds. Simonds memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with my 100-Year-Old Friend is forthcoming from Random House Canada in September, 2025.

Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, who is the focus of your novel Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay, was a neighbour of yours. For this book, you’ve woven your own memories of Louise into a biographical narrative. How much research did this manuscript require? Were there any parts of the research or writing process that gave you pause?

Woman, Watching is not a novel, although it’s hard to say exactly what it is: not a biography although it is biographical, and not a memoir although there are threads of my own memories and observations through the book. Louise was what we call “a country neighbour” which is not the person next door, as in the city, but anyone within driving distance. We lived on opposite sides of a large lake, and about an hour apart by car. But at a time when writers were thin on the ground in northern Ontario, we were certain writerly neighbors. 

The research was fascinating and daunting: it absorbed a couple of years, mostly going through Louise’s 26 boxes of text archives and dozens of boxes of image archives at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Covid intervened, closing the archives, but the archivists arranged to have hundreds of pages of letters reproduced digitally, A close reading of Louises’s vast correspondences—mostly with her mother whom she wrote to every Sunday for 40 years, but also with professional and amateur ornithologists around the world—provided the foundation for the book. I also searched high and low to acquire all of her scientific and popular articles and books, many of which provided first-hand accounts of her field studies of birds, which I reproduced in the book. Unlike most biographies, I was intent on allowing the reader to get to know Louise as I had, through her own voice.

The whole project gave me pause! Louise asked me to be her biographer in 1990 and it took me 30 years and the writing of about 10 other books to find a way to make good on that promise. I am not a scientist by profession or by nature, so the scientific literature she excelled at was often a challenge. I didn’t want to get that wrong. But the biggest challenge came from parts of her life that felt extremely private. How much should I tell? If she were alive and writing a memoir, what would she reveal? It helped to have known Louise: she was forthright, honest, principled. That helped me decide to include even the painful parts. 

Beginner writers are often told, “write what you know.” Merilyn, your book, The Lion in the Room Next Door, is a collection of short stories inspired by your own memories. Tell us about the process of writing that collection.

I actually believe that writers need to write what they don’t know. Writing for me is an exploration, whether of another person’s life, Like Louise’s and Beth’s in Walking with Beth, or an exploration of my own memories, not for the facts of them but for what they might mean.

As I was writing The Convict Lover—a process that took eight years—an image would suddenly pop up. The first was a lion walking down a hall. I pushed the image away and returned to Kingston Penitentiary, but the lion kept popping up. I finally stepped away from the prison and wrote the story of the lion in the room next door—there really was a lion in the hotel room next to where my family lived for six months, but no one ever saw it but me, so the story is about memory and what it means. I returned to the convict and the girl who brought him solace, but again and again some image would pop up—a gun, a machete, a Volkswagen van, a dead child—and I would have to write the story in order to clear my imagination for the book at hand. I think that the intense process of imagining the prison and more particularly the life of Peggy, a small-town girl much like me, shook loose significant, unresolved moments in my own life. 

A lion is often associated with courage, and writing about real-life experiences certainly takes a tremendous amount of it. At what point did you decide to write memoir and creative non-fiction?

Continue reading “Interview with Merilyn Simonds” →
Interviews

Interview with Roz Nay

Pauline Shen

In this post, we’ll be hearing from author Roz Nay. I hope you are as thrilled as I am about this interview! (See what I did there?) Check out her author bio:

Photo Credit: Lisa Seyfried Photography

ROZ NAY’s debut novel, Our Little Secret, was a national bestseller, won the Douglas Kennedy Prize for best foreign thriller in France, and was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Mystery and the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her second bestselling novel, Hurry Home, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Best Crime Novel award and The Hunted, her third, was nominated for Best Crime Novel in 2022. The Offing is her fourth novel. Roz has lived and worked in Africa, Australia, the US, and the UK. She now lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and two children.

More details about Roz and The Offing can be found here.

Roz, your first novel, Our Little Secret, began as a creative writing assignment and grew into a full-length manuscript. Tell us about that process. At what point did you decide to pursue novel writing and what did you learn at those early stages of your writing-for-publication journey?

I only kept going with my first-ever manuscript because I missed writing class, and needed to hang onto some part of it. I just patchworked together a narrative around a voice I’d created in class, and wrote it over a year while my two little toddlers napped. I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing, other than that I’d built a world I was enjoying writing. When I look back now, that time was fairly chaotic but what I learned most was that, when you have a story you want to tell, one way or another you get it done.

Image courtesy of Penguin Random House; Cover design: Emma Dolan

Beginning writers are often told, “write what you know.” For your thriller Hurry Home, the inspiration stemmed from your career in child services. Your newest book, The Offing, draws on your experiences while traveling in Australia. Roz, what does your writing process look like? How much preliminary research is required and at what point do you forge ahead with writing a draft?

Continue reading “Interview with Roz Nay” →
Nonfiction, Writing

Selecting Character Names

Pauline Shen
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

How do you select character names? If you’ve ever wondered this, consider first why you’re asking. It’s not like you have zero ideas of names to choose. Do you have a name in mind that you aren’t confident slapping down on the page? Maybe it’s the name of your childhood friend or a departed relative. Did you think about using a name you heard at school or work and thought it was rather unique but years later you’re unsure if it’s usable? The problem boils down to whether it’s a good fit.

The fit has to do with your character, the plot, and your intended audience. There’s a lot riding on a name, so it’s not just an arbitrary decision. You’re placing a label on a fictional being who represents an archetype, role-model, or possibly a new icon (i.e. Harry _ _ _ _ _ _ ). Which reminds me, you may only need a first name. Depending on your genre and plot, however, you may need to select surnames. And if you’re going for realism, this can be a huge conundrum.

So now that we’ve gotten closer to defining the problem, do I have an answer? Well, not exactly. I have some guidelines that I follow and I’ll offer some anecdotes along the way.

Continue reading “Selecting Character Names” →
Interviews

Interview with E.J. Nash

Pauline Shen

In today’s post, E.J. Nash tells us how she fits her writing into a packed schedule, gives advice to new writers on creating an internet presence, and talks about… Hawaiian pizza! (Hint: it’s writing-related) Check out her author bio:

Photographer Trina Koster

E.J. Nash holds a bachelor’s degree from The University of Western Ontario in Creative Writing and English Language & Literature, and a master’s degree in Information Studies from McGill University. Her work has been published by CBC, The Globe and Mail, Nature, Woman’s World, and in various literary magazines. She is an American-Canadian writer & librarian currently located in Ottawa.

E.J., you write a variety of fiction, non-fiction, and performance pieces. How do you arrange time for writing?

I like to get up early and write as much as I can before work, and I’ll write on my lunch break if the planets align. In the evening my brain has turned into a potato, so that’s when I crash in bed.

Downloading Google Docs on my phone has been a game changer. Most of my writing is done on my phone, and I edit on my computer. Writing on my phone gives me the flexibility to write anywhere! Plus, I’m not scared about losing my documents since they’re all hosted in the cloud.

Do you prefer to read books in e-book or physical book format? What are you reading these days? Which contemporary authors do you recommend checking out?

I read both print books and eBooks. Most of my day is spent in front of a screen, and I can feel my retinas crying for mercy, so it’s nice to look at a print book. On the other hand, some of the books I read are only available as eBooks, so I’m happy to scroll to my heart’s content.

Continue reading “Interview with E.J. Nash” →