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Writer’s Block: Margaret Macpherson
Margaret Macpherson sits our Writer’s Block interview to discuss her new collection of linked short stories, Tilting Towards Joy (Signature Editions). We talk with Margaret about finding unexpected inspiration while in France, using her own worries as fodder for her characters, and which of her characters she’d like to spend a day with most.
All Lit Up: Tell us about your new book. What can readers expect?
Margaret Macpherson: Tilting Towards Joy is a series of linked short stories that explores human connection. The reader will meet a cast of characters, players in a regular day, at some sort of gathering (I often use the dinner party, because they have their own special tension). Something will happen, some uncomfortable event, and the reader will witness both the exterior actions and the interior reactions of the people gathered. Further along in the collection you will meet the same character but often at a much earlier stage of life. By exploring their earlier landscapes, the uncomfortable event and the reactions to it will make more sense to the reader. Many of the stories are that rearview mirror look at life because I’m interested in how our earlier experiences form our personalities as we age. There is also a lot about letting go of expectations of others because I think that’s what we arrive at when we truly become ourselves. This “becoming”, it’s an evolution and it takes a long time. The joy in the becoming is when we are really our true selves and we connect with another human being. It’s those moments of growth and shifting attitudes and change, the growing pains I guess but because they are infused with something illuminating, there is joy in the encounter. A lifting of a curtain. A new understanding.
All Lit Up: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
Margaret Macpherson: I know it’s been said before, but I would like my readers to feel less alone. I’d like them to know while they are alone — we’re all just beings, whirling in space occasionally bumping into each other — but I want them to know those collisions can be entirely connective. Those little sparks rubbing up against a stranger or even someone you know well, seeing each other, really seeing, with all our idiosyncrasies, our flawed and wounded natures, those moments can be pure joy. And the reader can feel seen, sort of “oh I’ve behaved that way, I’ve thought those mean thoughts, but now I can see motives, background and ultimately, a character transforming, finding the truth behind the action or event.”
All Lit Up: If you weren’t an author, what would you be doing?
Margaret Macpherson: I think I would be Unitarian minister or a psychological counsellor, someone who gets to be present at life’s great moments: birth, marriage, divorce, death — the biggies. I’m so interested in the spiritual or metaphysical realm, how people act and react when mundane activities have been stripped away.
I’m also interested in life’s mundane activities and finding meaning in these. I studied psychology in Uni but failed statistics so maybe the analytical aspect of the science isn’t my forte. Yeah, probably minister, because it would also give me an opportunity to deliver an interesting, well-thought out message that ultimately offers people tools for living as well as the notion of an expanded universe. Not religious though. I think people have to find their own relationship with whatever mystical, creative, or spiritual force they choose.
All Lit Up: Which writers have had the most impact on your own writing?
Margaret Macpherson: This book is definitely influenced by the master storyteller Elizabeth Strout, author of My Name is Lucy Barton and of course, Olive Kitteridge. It’s funny because about half of the stories were written when my husband and I were in France on a house exchange and there weren’t a lot of English language books that weren’t history or biography. I re-read some early Atwood and, of course, collections of older short stories by Alice Munro but it wasn’t until I got to a small city called Geuret, where I found an English language copy of Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. I read that collection four or five times, first for entertainment, second to see how she did it, third for making sure I was seeing all the interconnectedness of the characters and fourth for theme and symbol. It’s an extraordinary collection of stories. I’ve read all of her work but there was something about this one book that helped me see that I could explore characters at different stages of their development and still love them despite their wrong-headedness or their flaws. In fact, I could love them better with their flaws!
All Lit Up: Do you have any rituals that you abide by when you’re writing?
Margaret Macpherson: When I sit at my writing desk, I often start by laying two fingers flat against my heart. I think that’s because when I start out writing I try to look within and write about something that is troubling me, I strip it down to its bare bones and start asking myself why it niggles. It could be something I’ve left undone, some sense of unsettledness with a person or people in my sphere, something I want to understand, smooth out, make sense of. I don’t usually write about that thing, but from that I transplant those needling doubts or unsettling thoughts to a character who has an entirely different set of circumstances than my own. I let their world intersect with my own preoccupation and create story around it. I guess that’s the central premise of each story or the tension, but it often doesn’t work out the way I think it will although I usually get some insights myself. It takes me years to craft a story. That’s the other thing. Literally, years. One of the stories in Tilting was first written in 1988. It’s been through so many incarnations I can’t begin to remember what motivated me to write it, but ultimately, it’s a story about a woman taking back her power and not allowing others to manipulate or influence her.
All Lit Up: If you could spend a day with one of your characters, who would it be and why?
Margaret Macpherson: I’d like to hang out with Carol, in “Casting.” She’s had a difficult life raising a severely handicapped son, having her husband walk out on her. She’s very despondent at the beginning of the story and then she meets the man who comes to see about her ex- husband’s car. I want to find out if they see each other again. There is such a deep intimacy between them with the tea ritual, and I’m not sure why I didn’t go further with the story. I suspect I wanted to leave it on the cusp of hope for a future but not the certainty of same. Uncertainty is what we humans have to live with, especially now in these turbulent times. Yeah, Carol. I suspect she’ll have a happier second relationship now that her kids are grown, and she can take care of herself more. I want good things for Carol. Like all of us who have suffered, she’s very deserving of love. I think the car guy will cherish her, at least, I hope so.
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Margaret Macpherson is a writer originally from Canada’s Northwest Territories. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and has worked as an essayist and journalist in Atlantic Canada, Bermuda, Vancouver, and Edmonton. She has published eight books including Tracking the Caribou Queen (winner of the IPPY Gold Medal for Western Canada Regional Non-fiction and shortlisted for the Alberta Book Publishing Awards for Non-fiction Book of the Year), Body Trade (De Beers NorthWords Prize, winner), Released (Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher, finalist), and Perilous Departures (Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher, finalist). Margaret lives in Deep River, Ontario.