Twelve years ago, when I was just starting out as an agent, a manuscript came my way that was haunting, deeply sad, and at its center was a mother daughter drama played out against the world of clairvoyance and the occult. There was also a murder any one of us could have committed. Amazing book I was very proud to have worked on. Afterlife has just been reissued as part of the wonderful librarian Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries. Tonight, the author Rhian Ellis has graciously agreed to answer some questions. Also for your viewing pleasure is a promotional video for the book. Thank you, Rhian! And congrats.
1) What kinds of writing do you outside writing fiction?
Emails, shopping lists, letters to the editor, doctor’s notes, and anonymous blog comments. I would like to write ruminative essays, but I can never get the tone right. I constantly turn ranty.
2) How much do you plan in advance and how much develops as you write.
I like to see the end when I start, or at least an end. Seeing the end is a kind of rudimentary structure — you can veer off-track, but at least there is a track. I’ve found that if I don’t have a good sense of where I’m going, I follow my whims into the swamp. But on the other hand, if I outline too much I get bored. It has to be a careful balance between surprising myself and keeping myself focused. To be honest, I find it a really difficult thing.
3) What is the secret to writing characters?
I try to pay attention to how I perceive real people and make characters who inhabit the world in a similar way. What makes people distinctive? I think physical description is really important — not “six feet tall, blue eyes,” but maybe “awkwardly tall, crazy eyebrows.” Once I can see them, the personality follows. I used to steal stuff from people I know, but that’s a really bad idea. No matter how hard you try to disguise them, people recognize themselves.
4) Your novel asks the questions: what is real? What is faked? How does that apply to fiction?
The book is really about writing, which I’d forgotten. Writing and mediumship both depend on the ambiguity of truth. Fiction has to feel true, even though you know it’s made up. It has to say true things. I came to decide that’s how mediumship works, too. A lot of the things Naomi says about being a medium is actually channeling me, talking about writing.
5) Did you research clairvoyance; how did you create the world?
There is a real town like Train Line in Western New York state — Lily Dale, NY. I grew up nearby and spent a couple of summers working there. So the world was pre-created, which was handy. I also read a lot of books. For years I’d been finding stuff in the paranormal section of the library — I love that stuff.
6) Can you talk about the mother/daughter relationship and how you created the tension between them?
The mother in the book is nothing like my own mother, in that mine is not hectoring and overbearing, but I did draw on our own intensely close relationship. It nearly killed me to break away and go to college, back in those days when it was too expensive to call more than once a week. I gave Naomi the same kind of relationship with a different mother, and then gave her reasons to never break away.
7) What are you working on next?
You know I have been working on something “next” since late last century. I am a mess: I start too many things and finish too few. But it is my life’s goal to send you something before you retire from agenting and become a full-time screenwriter. So I’m taking suggestions!
P.S. Of all the wonderful gifts clients have given me over the years, this one from Rhian holds a special place in my heart.
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It’s official. I move to Brooklyn tomorrow for the month of August. Got the keys. Dropped off a suitcase. Tonight: pack meds and computer, leave a check for the dog walker. I’m not going to set myself up for failure with unrealistic goals. The plan is to finish my screenplay, write my new sitcom, adapt Food & Loathing into a YA (hey, I already have the first sentence), lose 10 pounds, run every day, and invent the next Facebook. (Oh, and agenting. Hello?) Wish me luck!
Some consider it morbid, but the only thing I like writing more than my Oscar acceptance speech is my obituary. My husband has lovingly reminded me that agents don’t generally get eulogized in the NYT, but a girl can dream. I would like my obituary to mention that I devoted my life to writers and books. I’d like it to say that I was punctual. And of course I would like a handful of books to be mentioned, those that were career defining, those that people truly love. I think I will die in my mid-Eighties from accidentally lighting myself on fire with a cigarette,which I will be smoking in a linen closet at the nursing home.
What were you hoping for? A thick medal with a ribbon the colors of the flag. A long line of people shifting their weight? Was it fingers smudged with typewriter ribbon from fixing a sticky key. Were you hoping to find a new way to describe a flock of geese, a craggy promontory, a kiss goodnight? Is this your notebook? Is this seat taken? Are you elevating, this being August? Did you go to the reading? Did you fuck a great writer? Did you lose his favorite pen or steal it? Does time fold in on itself like some gorgeous origami? Is that your writing desk? Can I see what you’re working on?
Perfect NYC day. After a grueling day as a power agent, meaning I had a power breakfast, power lunch, power meeting at a law firm right out of Grisham, and a visit to my beloved psychopharmacologist, I went to see Uncle Vanya with Cate Blanchett. It was a star studded night of literati, of indie actors, Broadway war horses, a sit com actor in a straw hat and a lot of short men with Chekhovian facial hair, which is to say unkempt. Afterwards, John and I walked down to Soho and this may have been the best part of the night: everyone, literally everyone, looked amazing in the sultry New York night. Then m&m’s in bed. Some days life doesn’t suck.
Someone asked if I would write another book. Not if I can help it. I really want to write movies. I think I might have mentioned that I got kicked out of NYU film school. I would like to get an Oscar and say, “no thanks to NYU.” Do I know that I’m too old to break in (yes, yes, the King’s SPeech)? Do I know that most indie movies are made by writer-directors? Do I know that family dramas are the last thing anyone wants (yes, yes The Kids Are All RIght, The Descendants) And yes, the rules are made to be douche bags. But I do have book ideas. Especially during the month of August when the sun follows me. THere’s my old idea, THe RIng of Truth which looks at why people have mini orgasms when they read or go to readings; My Carrie-inspired YA, I want to adapt Food & Loathing as a YA, or rather a publisher asked me if I ever thought to then disappeared. I want to write LOVE IS BLINd and Other Cliches. I want to write a book called Knowing When To Quit (about Family, love, and work). A sort of counter-intuitive self help that suggests quitting and giving up is just as valid if not more than persisting. I’d like to write a book about seeds. A cultural history.
You know how people say it’s the journey not the result that counts? Really? I mean doesn’t that sound like a rationale from people who don’t get results. Also, what’s so great about the journey? It’s full of hardship and suffering and self-doubt and insecurity and rejection and humiliation and pain and financial strife and snubs and perceived snubs. Aren’t the results what you really want? Would I really keep writing screenplays if I didn’t think that somehow, somewhere a producer might spit in my kasha? Do I love it that much that I would just stay on the journey, clop clop clop, if I didn’t eventually get some nod from the universe that I wasn’t a dumb shit? I don’t know. I mean: I’m asking? No one hires me to go on a journey. THey want their book sold. Okay, that’s different. Don’t people pursue what they are generally good at anyway? I’m never going to be a zumba instructor, a phlebotomist, or a senator.
We need to talk about structure. I’ve known some editors who feel they can impose a structure on a book. Others who feel it is organic, issues forth from the text. You say potato. I say tomato. Some books lend themselves to certain structures. The story dictates it to some extent. Some books need to be written before the ultimate structure is clear. What exactly is structure: parts, chapters, point of view, tense are all part of it. Some writers have a sixth sense when it comes to structure. They know how to break a story, when and how to shift tense, how to deploy point of view. The most challenging book I ever worked on structure-wise was Columbine by Dave Cullen. How to write about an event everyone thinks they know about? How do you make the past present? If you are lost where structure is concerned, read a short story collection and analyze how each story is constructed. I always felt as an editor that you had a certain amount of play up to about 75-100 pages at which point you had to commit. I think some of the manuscripts that are submitted to me are in search of a structure. There is no organizing principle. No clock. No shuffle. No feint.
Betsy Lerner 