Welcome to Writer Wednesdays!
How is it February already? We are just over a month in to Writer Wednesdays. If you missed any of the previous author interviews, click here to find them. Read, get inspired, and please share.
The writing life can be lonely sometimes. I remember writing all my books and sitting alone at my desk for HOURS at a time, almost every day, and having a throbbing ache for human interaction afterward. Sometimes during the writing itself, particularly while crunching a deadline.
Do you ever feel this way?
Learning that we are not alone in this beautiful writing life is heartening and I hope that everyone reading this right now can feel a part of something greater – a community – where there is support and camaraderie.
Author Alexis Marie Chute
Here are some tips for the lonely writers out there:
- Write in a coffee shop or library. Sometimes simply being around other people can help the feeling of the blues. TIP: Bring earplugs or headphones if you get distracted by sounds.
- Take five minutes to text a few friends or family members. Then put your phone away where you can’t easily reach it, and set it to silent and DO NOT DISTURB. Then write your heart out for a set period of time, say 45 minutes or an hour. After you’ve had intentional focused work time, allow yourself another five minutes to check your texts and messages. Hopefully one or two replies will have come in and you’ll feel a bit more connected.
- Plan an evening activity with others after what you anticipate will be a focused solitary writing day. You will have motivation to work hard and something to look forward to.
- Snuggle with a furry friend while you write. They may get annoying, but remember that your friendly feline or canine are keeping you company because they love you.
- Join a writing group or book club. You’ll have the chance to be social with other like-minded folks. These may become the people you message on your scheduled text breaks.
Today is another lovely opportunity to get inspired by another writer and peek into the life of published authors. Welcome to today’s guest:
Jenna Butler!
I have known Jenna for years and I love her kind and tender spirit. She is a prolific writer and her work is relevant and provocative for modern thinkers. Welcome Jenna!
Author Interview:
Jenna Butler
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I knew when I was very young, four or five years old! I loved observing the world around me and recording it, and thinking up stories and poems of my own. Writing has always been at the heart of me; I honestly can’t remember a time without it.
Who were the authors that influenced you as a youth, and in what ways?
Early on, I found so much pleasure in the adventure stories of J.R.R. Tolkien (still do) and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Tolkien taught me a lot about the power of having a boundless imagination and of building worlds thoroughly, right down to the languages. Dickinson taught me about the importance of rhythm and rhyme, and about precise ways of capturing the natural world. I always longed for works by writers from mixed ethnic backgrounds like my own, but I didn’t come across those until years later (my school library didn’t have them).
How did it feel when you got to hold your very first advanced copy of your book?
Surreal. I’d been working on those poems for six or seven years, and they were finally out of my head and on the page for everyone to see. Part of me was thrilled, and part of me wanted to squirrel them away again where nobody could read them! I’ve felt the same about every subsequent book.
What was the inspiration behind your book(s)?
Aphelion was written between Canada and England while I was living between countries, looking at the physical and emotional distances of the immigrant experience. It explored the many homes we carry with us and the ones we lose along the way.
Wells was a long poem that I wrote as a gift to my grandmother as she disappeared into senile dementia. It was a way of regifting her the words, people, stories that she was losing.
Seldom Seen Road told, in poetry, the stories of the prairies my husband and I travelled through one summer when we drove across Canada. Along the way, we learned many buried or forgotten pieces of history from people of multiple backgrounds, and these stories formed the roots of the poems in the collection.
A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail was a non-fiction account of the building of our off-grid organic farm in northern Alberta, and an exploration of the costs of large-scale agriculture that doesn’t seek to improve the earth in the long run.
Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard was a non-fiction travelogue about a voyage I took on a barquentine ship at the Arctic Circle, chronicling the changing Arctic and connecting that back to the climate change I was witnessing on our northern farm in the boreal forest of Alberta.
Revery: A Year of Bees is my current book, and it explores the history of beekeeping in Alberta, as well as bees as a path to healing from trauma, and bees as representative of climate grief. It’ll be out in 2020.
What was your publishing journey like?
It’s been long and nuanced, and I’ve been very grateful to work with several wonderful editors and publishers along the way. I’ve learned a great deal about tightening my craft, and I’ve learned the deep worth of editors who can see to the heart of a book and nudge it in the right direction so that it really achieves what you as the writer want it to. Sometimes, a good editor can see in writers what the writers can’t quite see in themselves.
What advice do you have for aspiring young novelists?
Well, to all young writers – three things.
First, keep at it. Success is lovely but fickle, and failure is guaranteed. We’ll all fall down at times in our writing, but the measure of us as writers is in how we get up and keep going. Don’t let your head be turned from the work by anything, if that work is important to you.
Second, read. You can’t be a good writer without being a voracious reader. Read widely and challenge yourself to dip into genres you might not be sure you like, as well as the ones that light you up. Learn as you go.
And third, find community. Writing is solitary, but community is everything. Cultivate your literary friendships as you do your own work: with care and attention.
If you could have any superpower, which would you choose?
It would be amazing to be able to fly!
Where is your favorite travel destination?
I love going home to the UK and Ireland. I was born in England and have family and good friends in England, Ireland, and Scotland, so returning to those places and landscapes means a great deal to me.
When you’re not writing, what are your favorite hobbies?
I run a farm, so being out in the market garden is a huge and grounding part of my world. I grow flowers and make healing balms and salves. I also love doing beadwork, playing music, hiking, and reading in the company of my two cats.
Where can people find you online?
I’m at www.jennabutler.com, www.larchgrovefarm.com, and on Facebook and Instagram.
About the Book:
“Windburned, eyes closed, this: beneath the keening of bergs, a deeper thresh of glaciers calving, creaking with sun. Sound of earth, her bones, wide russet bowl of hips splaying open. From these sere flanks, her desiccating body, what a sea change is born.”
From the endangered Canadian boreal forest to the environmentally threatened Svalbard archipelago off the coast of Norway, Jenna Butler takes us on a sea voyage that connects continents and traces the impacts of climate change on northern lands. With a conservationist, female gaze, she questions explorer narratives and the mythic draw of the polar North. As a woman who cannot have children, she writes out the internal friction of travelling in Svalbard during the fertile height of the Arctic summer. Blending travelogue and poetic meditation on place, Jenna Butler draws readers to the beauty and power of threatened landscapes, asking why some stories in recorded history are privileged while others speak only from beneath the surface.
THE COUNTDOWN IS ON!
Join author Alexis Marie Chute as her new novel – Inside the Sun – quickly approaches its publication date.
Pre-order Inside the Sun by clicking here!
About Inside the Sun (book three in The 8th Island Trilogy):
All worlds are dying, and it’s up to one broken and dysfunctional family from Earth―the Wellsleys―to save the day.
Cancer-ridden Ella celebrates her fifteenth birthday beneath an enchanted mountain, but it is what lies even farther below―the mysterious Star in the sea―that demands she grow up quickly. While Ella grapples with the sacrifice she must make and the lies she is forced to tell, her mother, Tessa, is hell-bent on protecting her.
Through bizarre encounters, love-sick Tessa realizes that she is not the lonely orphan she believes. Her husband, Arden, and father-in-law, Archie, are not the only ones with magical bloodlines. This revelation changes everything.
As Archie chooses to embody his unexpected ancestry, he learns that leading the charge in the ultimate battle against evil won’t be as easy as he thought. He’ll need his family―and the strange allies he has gained―by his side to give Ella enough time to set things right.
Can they defeat the unstoppable Millia sands―and another unexpected foe―before everything they hold dear is destroyed? Or will their adventure tear them apart for good? The finale to The 8th Island Trilogy will hold you spellbound until the final page, and long after.
NOTE:
If you are a writer/author of any genre and would like to pitch yourself for an interview, please email me at info@alexismariechute.com
Thank you for joining me for Writer Wednesdays!
Catch you next week!
Happy writing,
– Alexis Marie Chute
