You may remember that last year I participated in the #30Authors event which paired authors with bloggers? (Refresh your memory here and here.) Well one of those authors, Adria Cimino and her partner at Velvet Morning Press, Vicki Lesage, wanted to take #30Authors to the next level. Together with Allison Hiltz, the mastermind behind the original event, they came up with the idea of an anthology. The news was first brought to us at the beginning of the year and I was thrilled to be asked to participate in the launch.
You can find out more about Legacy at the bottom of the page, but for now I want to introduce today’s guest, Marissa Stapley, who is one of the contributing authors.
How difficult/easy was it for you to come up with a short story around the theme of legacy?
I got lucky—it was really fortunate timing for me, because I was just finishing a draft of my second novel and I’d had to kill a darling: a bit of a standalone chapter with a character who didn’t appear in the rest of the book and yet whose story I felt really needed to be told. When I cut the chapter out of the book, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about Delia, and her legacy. And then, a few days later, I was asked to contribute to the Legacy anthology, and I knew exactly who and what I wanted to write about, of course! It was a neat experience writing about a peripheral character in the novel I was working on. And it made me feel like Delia wasn’t really gone from the narrative.
What does legacy mean to you?
Because I’m a writer, the idea of leaving a legacy has a very important meaning to me. Long after I’m dead my books will be around—at least, I hope! I imagine a great-grandchild reading one of my books or stories, many years from now, and this fills me with a strange combination of elation and fear. He or she might draw conclusions about who I am from the stories I leave behind that aren’t entirely accurate, and I won’t be around to defend myself! Of course, my greatest hope is that he or she sees exactly who I am from reading my stories, and feels proud to be related to me. That would be a really nice legacy to leave behind. What is more likely to happen is that my children and their children will be mortified by the sex scenes. Or, worse, they’ll never even read my books!
Without giving too much away can you summarize The Monument?
As I mentioned, it’s about a character in my next novel, which is called Things to Do When It’s Raining. One of the main characters of the book, a young woman named Mae, has a grandmother she has never met. This woman is Delia, and The Monument is about her, and a trip she takes to Mae’s town. The story breaks my heart, because it’s about what happens when you feel you’re too old and have made too many mistakes to do anything to change your life. I truly believe it’s never too late—but then again, I’m not eighty, and I haven’t alienated everyone who has ever loved me or had the potential to love me, the way Delia has. It’s a sad story. The novel is much more hopeful, but this is a very melancholy little vignette that has been plucked from it. Still, I love it. I love the hopelessness of it, because sometimes, as much as we wish things could be different, they simply aren’t. That’s life, and it’s painfully beautiful.
How long did it take you to write The Monument?
About a month.
Did you get a chance to read Legacy yet, and if so do you have any favorites?
I haven’t yet! I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my print copy, which I plan to bring with me this weekend to a writer’s retreat I’m heading off to.
Your debut novel, Mating for Life, was published last summer, tell us a little about that.
Talking about Mating for Life still feels like talking about a child who has left the nest and is traveling the world. I miss the book in so many ways, especially now that I’ve completed my second novel and feel such distance from it. But it is still such a huge part of my writer’s heart, this first novel of mine. Mating for Life follows Liane, Ilsa and Fiona, the daughters of Helen Sear, a feminist wild child who proudly disdained monogamy, raising the three girls—each by a different father—largely on her own. (Now that the novel is out in the world, I cannot begin to tell you how many people have judged her for that. Poor Helen!)Now, Helen’s daughters have grown up and are trying to forge more conventional paths for themselves. Meanwhile Helen, now in her sixties, has fallen in love with a traditional man whose only flaw is that he wants to marry her. She fears losing him, but she can’t go through with marrying him just to make him happy, and this causes all sorts of problems.
Liane, the youngest, is an academic in the heady early days of a relationship. But he has an ex-wife and two kids, and her new role as a “step-something” doesn’t come with an instruction manual. Ilsa, an artist, has put her bohemian past behind her and is hoping her second marriage will stick. Except her world feels like it’s slowly shrinking, and her painting is suffering as a result. And then there’s Fiona, the eldest sister, who has worked tirelessly to make her world pristine, but who still doesn’t feel at peace. When she discovers her husband has been harboring a secret, Fiona loses her tenuous grip on happiness and is forced to face some truths about herself that she’d rather keep buried.
I wove the stories of the women together with brief epigraphs about the mating habits of animals. And it’s not just the Sear women whose stories are told in Mating for Life: a few of the women surrounding them also have chapters. I’m not sure I’ll ever write a book with such a broad scope of characters again, but who knows? I loved writing it, and I still love hearing from readers that they’ve loved reading it. Ultimately, it’s a book about what it takes to love another person—spouse, sibling, parent, child, friend—for life. So many people can relate to that. In fact, we all can.
I’m sure you get asked all the time, but are you working on anything new?
Oh, yes. Always! Now that I’ve finished Things to Do When It’s Raining, I’m actually working on two books at once. It’s a lot of fun. I’m at a very happy point in my creative life where the ideas are just flowing. I’m not naïve enough to think this will last forever, so I’m revelling in it.
I read on your website that you teach Creative Writing classes. Any tips you can offer to aspiring authors?
Write instead of talking about writing. Write every day. Write even when it hurts—and sometimes because it hurts. (There’s a Hemingway quote I love: ‘Write hard and clear about what hurts.’) Also, a writer friend recently loaned me Anne Lamott’s book about writing called Bird by Bird. All aspiring writers, and all writers in general should read that, as well as Stephen King’s On Writing. But then they should definitely stop reading about writing and get back to the actual writing!
About Marissa Stapley
Marissa Stapley is a National Magazine Award nominated writer who has contributed to many publications, including National Post, Today’s Parent, and Elle. She writes a commercial fiction review column called Shelf Love for The Globe and Mail. Mating for Life is her first novel. She lives in Toronto with her family, where she is currently working on another novel and teaching creative writing classes at the University of Toronto.
Catch up with Marissa via her website, Facebook and Twitter.
You can learn more about her debut novel, Mating for Life, on Goodreads.
About Legacy: An Anthology
What will you leave behind?
Long after we’ve left this world, our legacy remains. Or doesn’t. Or remains only in the minds of those who knew us, those whose lives we’ve touched. Those we’ve written to, or about.
If you had a choice, what mark would you leave? How should people remember you? Should they remember you?
Fourteen authors sat down during the month of January 2015, shut out distractions of the outside world and wrote about the subject. The resulting fiction and nonfiction stories fill the pages of Legacy: An Anthology. The book includes stories from Kristopher Jansma, winner of the 2014 Sherwood Anderson Award for Fiction, New York Times best-selling author Regina Calcaterra and Canadian best-selling author Marissa Stapley among others.
Within these pages, there is laughter, pride and hope. There is romance and rock and roll. Certain messages are eerie, while others bestow a sense of peace. The collection, through the discerning lens of each writer, runs the gamut of the human experience.
To read more about Legacy: An Anthology visit Velvet Morning Press.
And to make the whole project even more awesome, all of the authors are donating their proceeds to PAWS for Reading.
Great interview! Thanks so much for featuring Marissa and participating in our blog tour…
I am SO glad that Marissa was able to participate in both the original event and the anthology. I loved her book, Mating for Life, and could barely wait to get my hands on her story. Thanks to you, too, for all of your continued support!
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