Writer’s Block: Michelle Willms

ALL LIT UP: Tell us about your book Northern Girls. What can readers expect?

MICHELLE WILLMS: My first book and memoir, Northern Girls, is a collection of nine true stories about being a northern kid with a single mother who struggled with alcoholism and who often chose romantic partners who were not good for her, or our family. I explore themes of generational trauma, parental addictions, and domestic violence, as well as resilience and strength. Following the sudden death of my mother in 2001, I began writing this collection to better understand how tragedy, trauma, and the breakdown of trust impacts multiple generations. I am grateful that in writing this story collection, I found some healing. My hope for readers is that they will also find some healing in the pages of my book too. 

ALU: Why do you write? 

MICHELLE: It might sound strange, but I write because I can’t not write. The mental health benefits of writing are incredible, and I find the page to be a very safe space. Being a human is messy, and I write to sort through the mess, I write to cope and to come to terms with things that have happened in my life, I write to explore and better understand the human condition and my own failings, and I write to heal.  

ALU: What books have you read lately that you can’t stop thinking about? 

MICHELLE: Léa Taranto’s book, A Drop in the Ocean, is an incredibly powerful coming-of-age book. I highly recommend it to everyone. Detective Aunty, by Uzma Jalaluddin, is a page-turning detective novel, and I had a hard time putting it down. Blob: A Love Story, by Maggie Su was another one of my recent favourites. And I always have my favourite memoirs and CNF anthologies close at hand too, to reread them: The Liar’s Club, by Mary Karr; Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt; Blood, Bones, and Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton; Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah; Open, by Andre Agassi; multiple volumes of The Best Creative Nonfiction, curated and edited by Lee Gutkind. 

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

MICHELLE: There are different kinds of creative blocks, but the worst one—that which makes a writer freeze, potentially spiral, and/or stop writing altogether—is a product of fear. To overcome and move past the fear block, I’ve learned to first identify what I’m afraid of so that I can deal with it, or at least accept it. While working on my creative nonfiction stories in Northern Girls over the last decade, the fear I often faced stemmed from a family rule that was instilled in me for years when I was a child, which was: “What goes on in this house stays in this house.” When I started writing about my childhood in the north, I feared I was going to get in trouble, and the thought of being disloyal to my family by breaking the family rule made me feel guilty. But I’ve pushed through. In order to write honestly, I’ve had to learn to sit with the discomfort of that feeling (it will always be there, but hopefully to lesser degrees as time passes). I’ve also come to understand that being loyal to family members who benefit from my silence, at the cost of my own health and well-being, means being disloyal to myself. And I’m not willing to be disloyal to myself anymore. 

ALU: Which writers have had the most impact on your own writing? 

MICHELLE: To name a few: Mary Karr, Chelene Knight, Rohinton Mistry, Frank McCourt, Thi Bui, Art Spiegelman, any CNF that Lee Gutkind curates as an editor, Trevor Noah, Nickalus Rupert (I’ve read his short stories multiple times and will until the end of my days—they’re a masterclass in short prose writing), Blake Kilgore, Susan Musgrave, Anjali Jayadev, Anna Leventhal, Léa Taranto, Cid V Brunet, Donald Miller, Jane Austen, Tolkien, and many more.

ALU: Do you have any rituals that you abide by when you’re writing? 

MICHELLE: I often light a beeswax candle when I write because I love the smell of it, and I allow myself to drink as much orange pekoe tea as I want. If what I’m writing about is difficult, I listen to “Soothing Sounds of Nature with Birdsong” by Tim Janis on Youtube in the background to remind myself that I’m safe; it grounds me in the present so I don’t get lost in the time travel of writing, which can bring me right back to difficult times and places, if I’m writing about my childhood or other difficult times and situations in my life. 

Michelle Willms holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a Bachelor of Social Work from McMaster University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. Her writing has appeared in multiple literary journals, as well as the anthology This Side of the Divide: Stories of the American West (Baobab Press). She is the 2021/2022 recipient of the Norman L. Rothstein Memorial Scholarship, awarded by the Smith Family Foundation on the recommendation of the Department of Creative Writing. Michelle and her family live in Southern Ontario, Canada, as settlers on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Ojibway/Chippewa, and Haudenosaunee peoples.