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Interview & Giveaway with Nichole Bernier, Author of The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

But that’s the funny thing about people who don’t fit into a box. They grow to infiltrate everything, and when they suddenly go missing, they are missing everywhere.
~ from The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

Without knowing why, or even how, it happens, a person can fill a void in our lives so quickly and settle into our being so fully that, surely, they must know us as well as we know ourselves. Even better. I have such a friend, who can tell at first glance (or at first long-distance “hello” over the phone) if I’m lying or telling the truth when I answer the question, “How are you?” Yet, even through such deep connections, I bet there are things unknown between us. How well can we really know another person?

This question ripples throughout Nichole Bernier’s debut novel, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., as one woman is bequeathed the journals of her deceased friend.

In reading Elizabeth Martin’s most personal thoughts, Kate discovers a side to her friend she hadn’t known or expected. The truth of Elizabeth’s marriage, her friendship with Kate, and her life ambitions unfolds, and, with that truth, so does Kate’s own pain and understanding of her relationships and dreams. In those discoveries, Kate finds strength to face her fears and embrace what’s genuine. This book speaks to the anxiety we so often hold about the future and to the relief we feel in finally letting go.

I’m honored to host Nichole Bernier today as she talks about her book, about life, and writing. I’m offering a giveaway, as well, with three ways to enter: tweet about the post (tag it with @Christi_Craig), post about the interview on Facebook (message me here so I count your entry), or – the most simple route – just leave your name in the comments. Come Tuesday, August 14th, you could be the winner of a copy of Nichole’s wonderful novel.

And now…welcome, Nichole!

CC: In your novel, Elizabeth’s journals act as a conduit of self-reflection for the protagonist, Kate, as Elizabeth reveals her own angst and struggles with motherhood, work, and relationships. Some of what Kate learns about herself is unexpected, and painful (and, boy, can I relate to what she discovers and how she feels). Have you ever had that experience, seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes?

NB: I was about to answer no, but then I remembered an email I received a few months ago. It was from a woman who’d been in my graduating class at journalism school, and had heard I was about to publish a novel I’d written while I was in the thick of the child-raising years. She contacted me because she was starting to write one, herself, and had just had her second child. We exchanged memories about school, and she recalled — ha ha! — how at a graduation party she had told me she was taking an unpaid internship. Apparently I said, You can do better.

I’d like to think she’s remembering a little incorrectly, and that I actually said something along the lines of, WE can do better. Because heaven knows I made poverty-level wages that year after school. Or that I said it in an emphatic, affirming way — You can do better! Someday, we all will!

But I don’t know what I said, or exactly what I meant. I don’t even remember the blur of graduation week very well, capping a rabid year working toward a degree that was not technically necessary for our field. All of us, subliminally haunted by the pressure to prove it had been worth it. I only know that that’s what her perception was, and that’s what matters in the end, really. But that thankfully, she didn’t take it badly enough that it kept her from reaching out 20 years later to a fellow mom who’s still just trying to do better.

CC: In the acknowledgements, you mention an island cottage that inspired the one in the novel, where Kate reads Elizabeth’s journals. Were you able to sneak away for a writing retreat at that cottage while working on book? And, where do you do most of your writing now?

NB: Oh, I was sneaking away whenever I could. Well, if you can call it sneaking when you kiss five kids goodbye a million times each — whether you’re going away for two hours or two days — and you sneak off after a very orchestrated hand-off to a generous husband who you’ll probably text with five minutes after you leave. Not very stealthy.

But no, I wasn’t able to steal away to that cottage. It’s someone’s primary home except for two weeks in the summer. And it doesn’t actually have that attic loft, sadly. That was an embellishment of my imagination. Though it sure would be nice if they added it, and then let us rent again someday.

As far as my writing space at home is concerned, I sort of wish I had a writing room, some serene window-walled space with a massive antique desk. But even if I did, I probably wouldn’t write there. Our house is never really quiet because we have five kids, and though I don’t need quiet to write, I need the noise to be sounds I’m not emotionally invested in.

So I’ve become that cliché of the coffeeshop writer. I love the impersonal bustle that’s a bit like being part of an office, the juicy bits of conversation you overhear, and yes, the constant flow of coffee and inability to hop up and tweeze your eyebrows. When I need real quiet, I go to the library.

CC: I love what you say in this post on your blog, how writing a novel can sometimes be a cathartic experience. I know that feeling, when a story rushes out and brings with it every inch of pain that’s been held in by grief. You also say that you never imagined yourself “as someone with a novel inside her, but now [you] can’t imagine [yourself] without it.” Do you have another novel in the works?

NB: There are two things I’m obsessed with these days. One is a disturbing premise set in the former Soviet Union. The other takes place on an eerie forbidden island I visited with the Park Service a few months ago, a real-life fascinating and creepy place that spans three distinct phases of history. Once my book tour quiets down I’ll be going to town on one of these stories, whichever one is keeping me up at night the most.

CC: What are you reading these days?

NB: I just finished Gone Girl — which had such exciting use of voice and tension created by unreliable narrators — and Salvage the Bones, a Katrina story about four motherless siblings that knocked me flat. Right now I’m in that hang-time between books, and since I’m on book tour, am traveling with a combination of things to pick up during flights – a hardcover, a galley, and my iPad. The ability to sample first chapters electronically is like a literary buffet, a moveable feast (at least until your battery wears out).

CC: What advice do you have for writers on the rise?

NB: You have to make your writing the absolute best it can be, and find folks who will help you get it there. Find a handful of like-minded writers who will be supportive and honest. Then revise, revise, revise.

When you’re ready to send it out into the world, do your homework. It’s so easy now to learn about agents and editors and the query process with all the resources online. On Twitter, for example, you’re hearing query preferences and pet peeves right from the horse’s mouth.

Network on social media. Write essays, articles, blogs, clever email, anything that’s a limbering-up exercise to keep your thinking process sharp and your creativity going and your voice out there. Then get thick skin and be persistent and find a way to keep up your stamina through the rejections. You’re not rejected until you’re rejected a LOT. There are as many reasons for rejection as there are Eskimo names for snow. You just have to find that one agent and editor with whom your story resonates, and who can bring it out to the world.

Nichole Bernier is author of the novel THE UNFINISHED WORK OF ELIZABETH D, and has written for magazines including Elle, Self, Health, and Men’s Journal. A Contributing Editor for Conde Nast Traveler for 14 years, she was previously on staff as the magazine’s golf and ski editor, columnist, and television spokesperson. She is a founder of the literary blog Beyond the Margins, and lives outside of Boston with her husband and five children. She can be found online at nicholebernier.com and on Twitter @nicholebernier.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway, through a comment, Twitter, Facebook (or all three). Look for the announcement of the winner on Tuesday, August 14th.

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Writing Prompt: Focus on the Details

I was back with my friends at the retirement center this last weekend. What a gift, to sit at the table and listen to their stories. Some of these folks are new to writing, others more experienced. But, what I’ve learned is that no matter how much time we’ve spent working at the craft, we can all use practice filling in the details of a story.

“A lot of people [have had] an experience that other people might want to read about. But this is not the same as “being a writer.” Or, to put it in a more sinister way: everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger.”
~Margaret Atwood, in Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

Regardless of our differences in age or in life circumstances, there are certain experiences through which we all connect: falling in love, falling out of love; our first taste of independence; the death of a parent; the loss of a friendship; the day we noticed how grown up our children had become. And, while anyone can tell a story revolving around these connections, what we, as writers, most want is to tell the story well enough so that it lingers in the readers mind long after they’ve reached “The end.”

This is where details fit in. Lisa Cron, in Wired for Story, says, “A story takes a general situation, idea, or premise and personifies it via the very specific.” It’s in the specifics where the story comes alive with images and readers become emotionally connected. A great example is Carolyn Miller’s piece, “Afternoons”, found in the August 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine. Here’s a teaser:

The dinner (lunch) dishes had already been washed and put away, and the leftovers – fried chicken, mashed potatoes, milk gravy, peas or green beans or corn or tomatoes from my father’s garden – were in the refrigerator, protected by plastic covers held on with elastic, waiting to be eaten cold at supper. The rooms were filled with the smells of food. The only sounds were those of the house slowly settling around us….

Rich details. Details that were not tossed into the story without serious consideration. We experience the world in three dimensions, but we each tune in to the specifics of our day or of an event that have meaning for us as individuals. We see, hear, smell, feel, absorb details that help us define and interpret the world. Think about those kinds of details when you sit down to write this month.

The Prompt.

Choose one:

  1. “Yesterday’s coffee.” (via The Writer Magazine)
  2. “It came in waves.” (via Patricia McNair’s Journal resolution ~ a daily prompt)
  3. “The lie.”

As you approach the prompt….

Keep in mind what specifics you, as a person (or your main character, if you are writing fiction) notice. Use one to three of the questions* below to guide your writing:

  1. About how old are you?
  2. What is to your left?
  3. What is to your right?
  4. Is anyone else in the image?
  5. Why are you there?
  6. Is there anyone who just left or who may be coming?
  7. What are some of the sounds in the image?
  8. What does the air smell like?

* these questions originate from a writing exercise given by Ariel Gore.

Just for today, don’t worry about writing well. Just write.

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* opening photo credit: kakisky on Morguefile.com
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Elizabeth Dudak on saying the words, “I am a Writer”

Today, I welcome Elizabeth Dudak, who is the author of What the Heck, Dec?!, a novel released by Orange Hat Publishing last March. Elizabeth shares on that moment of awareness and admission known to every closet wordsmith: the moment we finally say, out loud, “I am a writer.”

Thank you Christi, for this opportunity to be a guest blogger. I am humbled and honored.

It is still odd for me to talk about writing so openly, but it is getting easier. When I first started telling people what I am, what I do, the word writer came out of me like a foreign language. I coughed up the word, sometimes choked on it. For a long time, I felt using the word writer to describe me was pretentious. It was like I was trying to call myself a supermodel. Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen were writers. Stephen King and Nora Roberts are writers. Me? I was Elizabeth Dudak – a wife, a mother, an employee and a writer hobbyist. Sure, I acknowledged writing columns for local newspapers. And I wasn’t shy to mention a published magazine article here and a widely circulated poem there. I took continuing education and online classes to learn about dialogue, character development, description and plots…something writers do. But a writer? Or, gulp, an author? Those were my dream descriptions of me and for some reason; I couldn’t apply them to my waking world.

As I neared the age fifty, I grew tired of just dreaming about being a writer. Sure, it was fun to imagine, but at some point I needed to wake up and make my reality. I had fewer years ahead of me than I did in back of me, thus I needed to quit thinking and start doing. It would be difficult to put myself and my words out there, yet living in regret would be torture.

In July of 2011, I had a lunch date with a friend of mine. She is one of those friends I don’t see too often, but when I do, we jump right into deep and fulfilling subjects of life. Who the current real housewife is of whatever godforsaken city never seems to enter our discussions. We are concerned more about life’s purpose and meaning. Sure, it can be exhausted but afterwards, I always feel like the world is a doable place.

During the course of our conversation on this particular July day, I discussed with my friend of the writing passion that burned inside me. I told her about the hours I spent bringing to life characters, settings, plots and dialogue. My words exploded out of me as I talked about my waking hours being invaded by my writing world and my need – my strong, overwhelming need – to release them into my laptop. I explained all the stories that already crowded my computer’s memory. And I admitted to my discomfort of being called a writer as I regurgitated wisdom a professor once dispersed to me – a wisdom that was finally sinking in….three years later. This professor told me, “If you write, you are a writer.” Finally, I looked at my friend and said… only it was more like a desperate question…. “Perhaps I am a writer?”

A comfortable silence fell between us as it often happens when we talk. We were both taking in what I had just finished spewing. After a few more minutes of quiet contemplation, my friend looked at me and said “Well, you have a choice. Your words can stay in your laptop, or they can go out into the universe for others to enjoy.” This was my writer’s eureka moment. I repeated the words slowly to myself not caring how I looked in a crowded restaurant. She was right. I could stay a laptop writer, or I could become a real, authentic writer. I could take the risk of letting everyone see my words, which I believe is the definition of an author – – a writer who, driven by her passion, takes a leap of faith and present her words to the universe.

Flash ahead ten months, and many, many, MANY rejection letters later, and I am at a book signing….my own book signing…with my publisher… my own publisher, Orange Hat. The words in my novel, the story of Marti Karnawski and Declan Reed, are out of my laptop and onto pages sandwiched between a vibrant yellow back and a front cover. The title, What the Heck, Dec?!, is in green and purple on the cover. And there, in blue lettering, above the titles, is the name of the author…the writer….Elizabeth Dudak. It is my name. Now, I can finally admit…without a cough or hiccup…I am a writer.

Elizabeth Dudak lives in a tiny suburb outside of Chicago, with her husband, Peter; children, Leah and Matthew; mutt, Jordan; and mini-zoo of critters. She was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago where she learned the love of writing and reading from her English-teacher father and bookworm mother. She has written opinion-oriented columns for local newspapers for over four years, and in her blog, Write Where I Belong, she writes on the ramblings of her active mind. What the Heck, Dec?! is Elizabeth’s first novel, and it is proof that she subscribes to the first rule of writing, which is to write what you know.

About the book:
Marti Karnawski is waiting in the front office of Noteah Middle School trying to land first her teaching position, not a man. Yet one casual glance at Declan Reed – the school’s droolicious social worker with bad boy looks and cocky attitude – and she can’t help but fall head over in heels in crush. The fact he returns her interest, despite the other woman on his arm, poses a problem. Marti spent a lifetime trying to forgive a philandering father and understanding a mother in constant denial. She will not be the other woman – not even for one Declan Reed. Now all she has to do is convince her heart.

What the Heck, Dec?! is available for purchase through Barnes and Noble, and through Amazon.

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