Success Story with Heather Ramsay

I think my biggest stumble may be the only way I could have started writing a novel. I saw or heard or imagined two people in a brief scene, and then I thought maniacally—here it is. So I began writing this scene where a young woman sees a mysterious man walking in the woods and she decides to go look for him. I had no idea who she was (except that she was an Albertan on Haida Gwaii for her first job in the forest) and I had no idea who the man was. All the blogs and websites and creative writing teachers ask writers what the character’s motivation is. What it is they yearn for. I have to say that it took me years to figure that out. I am still not sure I figured it out. I think that is one of the chief challenges of writing fiction.

An early reader said that they enjoyed the writing and the characters, but the work felt episodic. As if one thing happened and then the other, but they weren’t sure the anecdotes were leading to any particular end. Doesn’t life happen like that, I thought? But people aren’t reading a book to just follow a life (except maybe that Scandinavian series that everyone loved a few years ago by Karl Ove Knausgaard… which I hated by the way!) Anyway, after a lot of trial and error, I found my way to a plot that I was happy with and a narrative arc for my characters. 

The most important lesson I've learned is to try to finish writing the whole book first. By this I mean, figure out the basic plot, the narrative arc, and the yearning before tinkering too much with sentences. I’ve spent hours re-writing scenes until they are a thing of beauty and then, in the end, chopped them right out of the final manuscript. I also learned that no matter how much I love a scene I have written, that sometimes they just have to go. I knew I was going on too long some times. When reviewing the manuscript for the ten billionth time, if I was skipping over lines, then it was time to get rid of that scene. 

A Room in the Forest is a story set on “the islands of the people” better known as Haida Gwaii. Lily’s story, in some ways, mirrors my own awakening to the injustices around land and land use practices on Indigenous land. To the different ways people approach their lives. To living a life based on alternate priorities than societal expectations. To the compromises people make between what they believe and the choices life provides. All these lessons come without a straightforward path. The learning is complicated by interpersonal relations, family, world events, dreams, hardships, and mistakes. I hope readers enjoy Lily’s journey—the clashing cultures, hidden secrets, and rugged landscape in the ancient forests of Haida Gwaii.

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