Writer’s Block: Edeet Ravel

All Lit Up: Is there one stand-out moment or experience you had that helped you realize you wanted to become a writer? 

Edeet Ravel: It was not so much a moment as a period of a few weeks when I was six and my father read Alice in Wonderland to me. Unabridged but translated into Hebrew. I knew right away that this was what I wanted to do with my life—write books that were as funny and wild and all-encompassing as Alice. An unattainable goal, but a good place to begin.

ALU: What inspired the idea for your latest book? 

ER: I’d been dreaming of writing a novel about these characters and their struggles for at least two decades, but I didn’t have the information I needed. I’m obsessive about not making historical or factual errors, and I needed to know more about the period. By a stroke of immense good fortune, some old documents came into my hands, and I finally had what I needed, and more. It was very exciting for me. In my life, there are myths surrounding an abusive family member, and I wanted to show, via a fictional story, how much harm a narcissistic parent can do, and how the lies everyone tells about him only perpetuate and intensify the harm. He was, luckily for me, not my parent, but I was in my thirties when he died, and I remember him well. Truth can be a powerful response to mistreatment; it can be the first step towards healing, towards finding a way out, towards stopping oneself from seeking out familiar patterns. I was also looking forward to immersing myself in the world of Montreal during World War II. So much has changed—and much has remained the same. It’s fascinating to look at the past and see what it tells us about our lives today.

ALU: How do you celebrate when you finish writing a book?

ER: I don’t finish—at some point my publishers send me a polite but firm email explaining that no, I can’t make any more changes; the proofs have been finalized. I have about five projects going at the same time, so I move on to the next one, though more than anything I want to rewrite the one that’s off to the printer’s just one last time…

ALU: Are there any real-life experiences or people that have influenced your storytelling? 

ER: Every experience, no matter how mundane, has the potential to stir my imagination. I’m also inspired by the writers and other artists I love. They go all the way, they take every risk, they are fearless.

ALU: How do you approach developing your characters or world building?

ER: My characters arrive fully-formed. Often they even have a name. And that is true of their world as well. Characters sometimes do and say unexpected things, but their basic personality doesn’t change. In Miss Matty, the central character was initially the wrong one for the story. I thought I could write about someone who was not a good person, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t just make her a little less selfish, a little less mean, because she was a coherent creation. I had to get rid of her altogether and create a whole new character, with an entirely different personality. Luckily, Fran, the new character, was there as soon as I needed her. She’d been waiting all along…

ALU: Give us a peek of your workspace/surface. Where does the magic happen?

ER: May I offer a drawing instead? This portrait is by my friend, the wonderful artist Pam Comeau, and the drawing captures exactly how I feel when I work.

ALU: How do you overcome creative blocks when they arise?

ER: If someone feels blocked, it’s nearly always because they’ve chosen the wrong topic or subject. They’ve decided that this is what they will write about, but it’s not what they really want to write, and boredom takes over. Boredom with one’s project is a red flag: it usually means you’re not letting yourself tell the story that is important to you, the story that is yearning to be told. It’s also possible to be in too much of a hurry. I wish one could rush the creative process, but works of art have their own timetable. Some of my novels come at once and seem to write themselves. At other times I need to live with a character and their story for several years before I figure out how to tell that story. I don’t start writing until I have a sense of how to go about it. If it’s not working, I set it aside and wait. As the proverb says, “You can’t shout at a blade of grass: Grow!” Writing is exactly like grass. It takes its own sweet time. That’s why I always have several projects going at once.

ALU: Lastly, why do you write?

ER: I never had a choice. I read fiction with an addict’s hunger from third grade, and composed stories in my head when I was bored in class. I waited until I was twelve to attempt a novel. Stephen King stole my story for Carrie, haha…

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Edeet Ravel has written fiction for young readers, young adults, and adults. Her books have received many literary awards and distinctions, including the Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize, the QWF Blachford Prize for Children and YA Literature, the J.I. Segal Award and the Snow Willow Award. She has been nominated twice for the Governor General’s Award as well as for, among others, the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, several Children’s Tree Awards, the Arthur Ellis Award, and the Vine Award. Her books have been translated into several languages and her YA novel The Saver was adapted for the screen. She lives in Montreal, and loves to hear from readers. Her name is pronounced eeeDEEET (not “edit”).

Photo of Edeet by Shlomi Bernthal.