Ask the Author: Terez Mertes Rose
Answered Questions (11)
Terez Mertes Rose
I don't wait for inspiration. I just sit down and start moving those fingers. (A spiral notebook and pen are very good for those times when the brain and the fingers don't want to cooperate.) I get up at 4am and it's to write. Other times of the day, procrastination opportunities abound, but not in the dark of early morning. It is, invariably, my most productive time of the day. It helps to have a routine. As well as being someone whose compulsion to write drives them to write day after day, year after year. I can't not write. It's a strange but intriguing problem to have.
Terez Mertes Rose
The writer, in a frenzy of never-before-experienced productively, feverishly wrote day and night for four days in a row until he had created something incandescent and breathtaking, a work of art that far exceeded anything he'd ever before produced. Then the power went out, before the writer could press save, and only then did he realize that, in his frenzy, he'd never once pressed "save," and it was gone, all of it, never again to resurface.
Terez Mertes Rose
I've always got half a dozen books I'm reading at once. Always a few nonfiction, like a biography or history-based, and toss in another two books that have a educational or self-exploration angle to them. As for fiction, which I simply can't live without, I love novels (and authors) that develop the characters so distinctly, you feel like they are a close friend and you want to follow them anywhere they go. That tends to be in the women's fiction and literary fiction category. I'm curiously uninterested in the new subgenre of "domestic thriller." Little dark secret: early into those books, I'll page to the end, find out who did what, or what the dramatic point was about, and then return to reading so I can enjoy the characters, the writing. I enjoy thrillers IF the characters are interesting, compelling, and grow through the story. Novels that are heavy on plot and light on character growth I don't often read, although my bookshelves hold a staggering variety of reads, because, hey, some days you want a different type of read. I'm a sucker for a love story, but I'm not a romance reader, because they tend to follow a formula and there's rarely a lot of character development. In the end, I absolutely love escaping into a story and being caught under its spell. It probably sounds melodramatic to say that life without books isn't worth living, but I kinda sorta believe that. I just love having those sanctuaries to slip into. No surprise that I turned to fiction writing, then, as a career.
Terez Mertes Rose
Ooh, fun question! I assume you mean within my own writing, yes? Creating fictional relationships and romances are so much fun, it's almost like having an affair in your head (shh - don't tell my husband!) and it's fascinating to ride the trajectory, observe what works, what falls flat once I'm moved on to the next story. I had a lot of fun creating Gil and Lana as a couple, but the more I delved into it, the more complicated it became. (The first draft was almost goofy, the way it all flowed for them, minus some of the dramas that appeared in later drafts.) Now that I've completed story 1, story 2, and am playing around with story 3, it seems to me that relationship lacks real substance, and that Gil has had it far too easy, wooing a pretty dancer, winning her, etc. So, I think that's going to backfire in story 3 (oops, spoiler alert). In story 1, as well, I enjoyed creating a happy ending for Alice and Niles, but, once again, it doesn't seem to me that they're an extraordinary couple. I think OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT does a more nuanced job in relationships. Just adore the way Dena and Misha developed from strangers, to friends, to really close friends, and, well, I'll stop there so as to avoid another spoiler for those who haven't read Book 2. And Rebecca had a bit of a bumpy ride through Book 2 - it's only in story 3 (still too early to consider it a Book 3) that she gets her chance at a great relationship. Which, hint hint, first begins in the last chapter of Book 2. Right now, THEY are my favorite fictional couple. In the end, it seems to me I most like the couple/characters that are most alive in my mind. They seem to take turns. And, as a result of noodling around with new scenes and dialogue and pairing up old characters with newer ones, some relationships are springing up that I hadn't seen coming. Ooh, what fun! It's one of my favorite things about writing fiction - this sense of "where did THAT come from?!"
Thanks for asking the question!
Thanks for asking the question!
Terez Mertes Rose
Blogging keeps me busy, as does reviewing ballet performances during the ballet season (December to May). But I will always find time to write fiction—it’s my favorite writing practice. And at this time, I find myself in the unlikely situation of working on two novels concurrently. Whoops, not my initial plan! But there are follow-up stories popping up in my head about how all the characters’ lives and relationships come full circle, from both OFF BALANCE (Book 1 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles) and OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT. My original plan had been to focus on revising my first novel, completed in 2003. It’s about a ballet dancer who goes to Africa, thinking she can outrun her challenges back home, only to encounter worse ones there. Toss in a cross-cultural romance with a privileged, haughty African man that consumes and reshapes her world and world view. It’s a great story with lots of humor and emotional (okay, and sexual) charge. I’d like to inject more depth into it, coax out the ballet angle a bit more, and experiment with having a few of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles characters show up, through letters or flashback. The story is set in the late ‘80’s, so it would likely be one of the older characters, like April, a ballet master who appeared in both Book 1 and 2. It would give me the chance to reference a younger, more vulnerable Anders, as well, a scenario that fascinates me.
What’s great about the two-book conundrum is that the two projects can develop in tandem and enrich one other. To my relief, I’m discovering that working on one doesn’t lead me too far away from the other. It keeps me in the same world, although for the Africa novel, the Ballet Theatre Chronicles characters will remain in the periphery of the main character’s Africa experience. My plan is to finish and publish the Africa novel first, but at this point, who knows?! Maybe Book 3 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles will raise a clamor in my head and heart, and appear first. Most important for me is that I’m enjoying discovering new depths in each of the stories. Being a writer, for me, is very much about the journey, as opposed to the destination.
What’s great about the two-book conundrum is that the two projects can develop in tandem and enrich one other. To my relief, I’m discovering that working on one doesn’t lead me too far away from the other. It keeps me in the same world, although for the Africa novel, the Ballet Theatre Chronicles characters will remain in the periphery of the main character’s Africa experience. My plan is to finish and publish the Africa novel first, but at this point, who knows?! Maybe Book 3 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles will raise a clamor in my head and heart, and appear first. Most important for me is that I’m enjoying discovering new depths in each of the stories. Being a writer, for me, is very much about the journey, as opposed to the destination.
Terez Mertes Rose
Back in the spring of 2006, in my earlier days of novel-writing, my sister was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma—a rare, benign brain tumor on the eighth cranial nerve. While the ensuing craniotomy and tumor removal were deemed a success, her facial nerve had to be clipped in the process, resulting in facial paralysis on one side, along with the more typical post-craniotomy brain fog, dizziness, single-sided deafness and ear-ringing that had worsened. Bad luck on my end, too: my completed novel went over like a lead balloon with my agent. She suggested that I try my hand at something incorporating ballet, which I’d touched on in my first, unpublished novel. So as my sister struggled with the aftereffects of her acoustic neuroma, immersing herself in therapies and surgeries and strategies, I set to work on a new novel. But it would only be in February of 2011, after the first ballet novel didn’t sell, and my fourth novel didn’t sell, and my agent and I were once again musing about ballet in fiction for adults, its absence in the current marketplace, that it all came together in my mind. I said to her, “what do you think about a ballet novel featuring two sisters, dancers in the same elite company, and one of them gets felled by an acoustic neuroma diagnosis and a host of post-op problems?” She loved the idea. And so I got to tell a new ballet story while concurrently telling my sister’s story (although she’s a nurse and not a ballet dancer). Which meant a lot to me; my sister has continued to struggle terribly since her acoustic neuroma removal, and there’s so little I can do to help her. Telling the world her story, the struggles she and her fellow acoustic neuroma patients suffer, made me feel like I was helping in my own small way.
Terez Mertes Rose
I'm not, but it reminds me that I definitely want to get in touch with her, because my forthcoming novel within the same series is going to be RIGHT up her alley. (Talented soloist suffers a debilitating condition that sidelines her for an extended period and threatens her career.) I'm so glad you plan to read my book, and a head's up: it will go on sale for $0.99 this Thurs, July 14th, and remain that price as part of a Kindle Countdown deal, for 7 days. (And as I always tell people, if money or Amazon access is a challenge/nuisance, I'm happy to send out a plain, old, Word document e-copy. I value readers more than sales $$.) Thanks for the invite to class in San Diego - ooh, that sounds like FUN! : )
Terez Mertes Rose
A cup of tea with hot milk and sugar. A quiet setting. A playlist of classical music playing quietly in the background. Well, I should say, that’s my ideal set up. That, and lots of solitude. But when life doesn’t allow you those things, you still gotta write. Fortunately, the compulsion to write runs deep inside me, and when the urge comes up to write, I will stop in my tracks, if at all possible, and just start to write. I have pads of paper and pen in the car, in the bathroom, one or two in each room of the house, and spiral notebooks throughout the house. I carry a journal at all times. In the end, I need only a thought, a pen and paper to write.
Terez Mertes Rose
If you don’t love the process, really love to write, well, don’t do it. If you can’t NOT write, well, there you go. Write. The reward is in the journey, and journeys don’t pay well. I am okay with the fact that I’ve devoted an astonishing number of hours over the past twenty years to project after project, with very, very little income generated. We’re talking something like $2.00 a week for a thirty hour work week. But what do I get instead of money? Oh, wow. My spirit, soul and heart all sing when I’m engrossed in my work, or when I look over a finished product. It’s a good feeling like nothing else on earth. Over the years, I’ve tried the 9a-5p route, the sales representative route, the hotel and food/beverage industry route, the teacher route, and nothing, nothing, came close to nourishing me like my writing has. If that’s the way you feel, too, well, WRITE. But do this, too: try those other worlds, those other jobs. Bump along in the wrong place for a while. Nothing makes the right place resonate more than finding it after living in the wrong place/space for a while. And besides, if you’re going to be a writer, you have to have something to write about. Don’t go immersing yourself in your ivory tower, away from the real world, all the time. That’s escaping life. Writing shouldn’t be about escaping life. It should be about taking what’s tough, what’s unutterably beautiful, what’s baffling or enraging, and using your skills as a sensitive, thinking person, to craft prose that reflects how you feel about the world. Or that shines a new light on an issue, a problem.
Terez Mertes Rose
That’s a trick question, because it’s my third novel of six that’s heading out into the world this month. But we’ll go ahead and call this novel both “my first” and “my most recent,” to keep life uncomplicated. Sound okay? So. Where did I get the idea? This is going way, way back. I wrote my first novel in 2002 about a ballet dancer who runs off to Africa to escape her problems, only to encounter thornier ones there. I spent over two years on it, lovingly crafting it, and while it didn’t earn me an agent, it impressed one enough to say “great stuff but a tough sell. Please keep me in mind, though, for the next one.” Well, two years and a polished manuscript later, turns out she hated the next one, but she still liked my writing enough to chat with me, discuss what she felt my strengths were as a writer. “Why not a ballet novel for the next one?” she suggested. “I loved what you wrote about ballet in your Africa novel. It’s a fresh topic [particularly back in 2006] and I think editors would take interest.” The conversation took place on a Friday afternoon, and I told her, with a confidence I didn’t feel, that “sure, I can make this happen! Let me tootle around with some ideas over the weekend and I’ll touch base early next week.”
Well. I am simply not that talented a creative writer. Essays, I can whip off in a few days’ time, but novels? Even the core idea? Yikes. I finished the call, wandered outside to my front yard, and began walking in small circles, thinking, shit - what have I done?” Because every aspiring novelist really, really wants an agent, and this was an agent I’d targeted as someone I wanted to work with, over two years earlier. I went to bed that night, mind blank, in a mild panic. Saturday, all day, I cast about for ideas with little success. And then, on Sunday in yoga class, it all came to me, spilling out like a tipped over jar of honey. An ex-dancer (like me). A rising star dancer (never like me, but ah, every dance student’s fantasy, right?). Romance (always my favorite writing topic). The struggle to actualize not just professionally but internally. The struggle to face the difficult things in life you keep running from (a recurring theme in all my novels). The way friendships can both nourish and challenge you. All amid the glorious backdrop of the ballet world, where I’d devoted so much of my time, energy, love and attention, through my adolescence and young adulthood.
In the course of one afternoon, OFF BALANCE was born. I tore out of that yoga class, hurried home, hastily sat down in front of my desktop and stopped writing only to make meals for my family, get some sleep, get my son off to elementary school and various mandated afterschool activities, but my mind was always, always, inside my story. Three months later I had it, the first draft of OFF BALANCE.
Well. I am simply not that talented a creative writer. Essays, I can whip off in a few days’ time, but novels? Even the core idea? Yikes. I finished the call, wandered outside to my front yard, and began walking in small circles, thinking, shit - what have I done?” Because every aspiring novelist really, really wants an agent, and this was an agent I’d targeted as someone I wanted to work with, over two years earlier. I went to bed that night, mind blank, in a mild panic. Saturday, all day, I cast about for ideas with little success. And then, on Sunday in yoga class, it all came to me, spilling out like a tipped over jar of honey. An ex-dancer (like me). A rising star dancer (never like me, but ah, every dance student’s fantasy, right?). Romance (always my favorite writing topic). The struggle to actualize not just professionally but internally. The struggle to face the difficult things in life you keep running from (a recurring theme in all my novels). The way friendships can both nourish and challenge you. All amid the glorious backdrop of the ballet world, where I’d devoted so much of my time, energy, love and attention, through my adolescence and young adulthood.
In the course of one afternoon, OFF BALANCE was born. I tore out of that yoga class, hurried home, hastily sat down in front of my desktop and stopped writing only to make meals for my family, get some sleep, get my son off to elementary school and various mandated afterschool activities, but my mind was always, always, inside my story. Three months later I had it, the first draft of OFF BALANCE.
Terez Mertes Rose
Oh, this is something I've dealt with quite a bit in the past few years, which I wouldn't have thought possible 8 or 10 years ago. It's sort of a sorrowful thing to observe writer's block, because it means you're outside that bubble of oblivion that makes you write and write, blissfully unaware that what you're writing might be utter crap. That's really what writer's block is, to me. It's being hyper-critical of your writing as it's coming out of you. Writer's block, for me, doesn't mean having no words at all come out. It just means it's super lousy writing. Wait. I guess I've had the former, as well. They both feel pretty lousy. But I remember the marvelously inspiring message I learned from Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD. Don't be afraid to write shitty first drafts. Oh my goodness, how crucial, that message. How important to whisper it to yourself on a bad day. A bad week/month/year. In fact, I think I've forgotten to remember it, of late. Note to self: don't!
The other way I deal with "writer's reluctance," I'll call it, since writer's block is a bad frame of mind, is to set a timer. 20 minutes. Even on the worst of days, I can write for twenty minutes. Can't we all? And I remind myself that it doesn't even have to be GOOD writing. I am just there, in the process, guaranteed, for those twenty minutes. Sometimes when the timer sounds, I keep going. Sometimes I stop instantly. The best part is knowing that I did what I set out to do. I was a writer, involved in the process. And, for a writer, really, there's no better place in the world to be.
The other way I deal with "writer's reluctance," I'll call it, since writer's block is a bad frame of mind, is to set a timer. 20 minutes. Even on the worst of days, I can write for twenty minutes. Can't we all? And I remind myself that it doesn't even have to be GOOD writing. I am just there, in the process, guaranteed, for those twenty minutes. Sometimes when the timer sounds, I keep going. Sometimes I stop instantly. The best part is knowing that I did what I set out to do. I was a writer, involved in the process. And, for a writer, really, there's no better place in the world to be.
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