Interview with literary novelist Nettie Marie Magnan

Novelist Nettie Marie Magnan is chatting with me about her new novel, Dropseed: The Story of Three Sad Women.

Bio:
Nettie Marie Magnan is a writer turned nurse, turned writer again. Raised on the vast and rural prairie landscape that inspires her stories, it wasn’t until years of nursing that she felt compelled to write about loss, hope, the complexities of human relationships, and the beauty and torment and strangeness of being alive. Stories with a healthy mix of melancholy and optimism are the ones she’s always been drawn to, after all.

When she’s not busy working as a nurse or writing sad but optimistic tales, she can be found sketching the pretty elements of the prairie landscape, spending time with her family and cats, failing at both gardening and cooking, and as a lover of antiques, she enjoys volunteering at a local heritage museum.

Welcome, Nettie. Please tell us about your current release.
Dropseed, available on June 30th, is an intertwining tale of three small-town women and the heaviness of choice. We meet an artist, a dying woman, and a caregiver, each navigating the consuming effects of their unhappiness while they search, with one another’s help, for redemption and more potent lives. Dropseed delves into such volatile subjects as abortion, suicidal ideation, chronic illness, and mortality. The novel will be published through Chicken House Press, based in Ontario, Canada.

What inspired you to write this book?
Dropseed was largely inspired by those I’ve worked with and cared for during my eight years of nursing. I’ve always been intrigued by the psychology of old age, of illness, and depression, and so I combined these elements with the healing power of art. Furthermore, stories about women who push against ‘traditional choices,’ (motherhood and marriage) have always interested me, and I drew inspiration from these stories as well. I consider this novel a love letter to women who struggle with these traditional choices.

Excerpt from Dropseed:
Left to wait, she has absorbed herself in the city scene below, particularly in the archaic beauty of an old Catholic church, with its grey stone walls and curved cobblestone pathway leading to arched wooden doors. Tall bursts of bright green grass poke through some of the rounded stones, a thing that strikes her as hopeful, for whomever laid the pathway left the grass beneath it to die under the weight and lack of light, yet here are the stubborn green blades, giving life another try.

The sight reminds her of the cobbled lanes in Europe, a place she’s never been, but in her mind, the European continent and a picturesque cobbled lane seem perfectly synonymous somehow, like an early autumn evening and the full red shimmer of a harvest moon, or an old wooden rocking chair and a screened porch. She muses over the word cobble, the meaning of which is to produce or put something together quickly or roughly. Yet that’s precisely what makes them special, why they’re the subject of so many photographs, and why they’re so often revered and painted and written about. They’re usually made from limestone or some other natural stone, but she can’t tell what this accompanying church is made from, this antiquated structure rising high and separate from the straight lines of the downtown surrounding it, unaware of its own elegance. But it doesn’t matter that she can’t differentiate one type of stone from another. Stones, cobbled and lime, rounded or squared, are merely something to keep her mind away from the whiteness and sterility of this room. Stones, right now, are a beautiful, exquisite distraction.

It’s not too late, a voice tells her. You can have this thing pulled from your wrist, put your clothes back on, forget this clandestine trip to a whitewashed clinic in the sky. She watches meditatively as the slow drip of fluid descends through the long thin tube, and her breath catches in her chest as she’s afflicted once again by the enormity of her decision. There’s something cruel about this, something sinful. She thinks of her husband, of their house, the clean, quiet rooms. She sees in her mind the succulent plants on the ledge of the kitchen window, the ivory curtains she soaked in the sink then hung on the line to dry. She recalls the black-capped chickadee perched on the branch of a poplar while she finished her coffee, the wooden wind chime outside the dining-room window, making hollow sounds, and the apprehensive kiss placed on her cheek when her husband left for work. Because she loves him, it’s better to leave him in the dark. Her secretiveness is an act of kindness, the best way to protect his heart, which would probably be pulled to pieces if he knew. He would insist on being here to support her, or worse, and more likely, pleading with her to change her mind. He would have weakened her resolve, and she probably would have submitted.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I am working on a sequel to this novel, which will be written from the perspective of the sister in one of the Dropseed characters. A few of the characters from Dropseed have ‘cameo appearances’ in this new novel.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Although I’ve considered the act of writing as both a passion and a hobby since early childhood, it wasn’t until this first attempt at a novel was coming together in the editing process that I truly began to consider myself a writer. I would say that getting an offer of publication from my press cemented that feeling and gave me more confidence to refer to myself as a writer.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do not write full-time. I continue to work as a nurse, an occupation I adore and, as mentioned above, largely inspired the plots of the novel. Generally, I write in the mornings, once my husband has left for work and I still have several quiet hours to myself before leaving to start my evening shift. Mornings are ‘writing time’…even if it’s just scribbling in a journal for a while and not accomplishing very much. 

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I love theatrical, dramatic adjectives, such as ‘magnificent’ or ‘dazzling’ or ‘exquisite’. Upon rereading I have had to reign this in somewhat…but many of these dramatic adjectives remain. I usually don’t like to describe things half-way… I like to really amplify whatever I’m referring to, and these types of intense adjectives help me get there.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a child, I wanted to be an artist…a painter, I think. Which I still do for fun at times, but as I grew, I had no interest in doing it as a career. I also wanted to be a poet. (I didn’t have an interest in becoming a nurse until my late twenties).

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I would like the reader to know that even though they will be pulled into some very dark places with this novel, they will ultimately be pulled more and more into the light, so to speak. There’s quite a bit of sadness in the stories of these three women, but the novel is hopeful and optimistic about what life can render.

Links:
Instagram | Chicken House Press