Interview Conducted by Swetha Amit
What inspired the idea for Revival Season?
I once saw an image of a traveling van. For a long time, I wondered about the people inside the van. Where they were going, and where they were traveling. I then asked myself what it would be like if this van was a home away from home. And that’s how I came up with the idea of a family traveling for religious reasons. I initially started writing the book about religion. Then I began to develop the characters, power struggle, conflict, and the story of father and daughter.
What made you choose to write the story in the first person?
I love the first person as it’s intimate and close. I can also explore different things in the first person. Right from the time I saw the image of the van, I knew it was going to be about power, and the story had to be Miriam’s. She is fifteen, and that’s the age when so much is open to you. The story could have been from the point of view of the mother, but she had already resigned to life. Miriam was not resigned to life. She is at an age where she learns everything from scratch. And she is the person who can see the family’s flaws the best because she is a little bit on the outside. Also, I didn’t know if I wanted to access any other character’s thoughts beside Miriam’s. I wanted her point of view to be the reader’s guide to that world.
Were you ever concerned about the unreliable narrator element while writing in the first person?
Oh yes! I think about it a lot. According to some definitions of reliability-anyone who is young, and a naïve narrator is unreliable because they don’t see the world as adults see the world. However, I think Miriam is reliable. She knows this world better than anyone else. She loves her family deeply and wants to be involved with them. What does it look like when a person in your family is causing all the harm? Some people consider her unreliable, and I didn’t intend for her to be that way. She is trying to grapple with issues like how to deal with her family.
You have dealt with sensitive topics like religion and abuse. Were you ever afraid of offending anyone?
So, what’s complicated about this is that I am from Ohio and am a mid-westerner. I am polite by nature, and I would not like to offend anyone. When I wrote about religion, I was worried about upsetting people. These are things we don’t talk about as it’s such a taboo subject. And many people believe exactly the way Miriam and her family do. I was scouting for books, wondering who else was writing about this. I felt that if someone must write about this topic of power, parabrachial structure, and religious practices, it was going to be me. If I must offend some people to do that, then maybe it’s worth the risk.
Another irony I noticed is how someone who is a healer indulges in violence. That made me curious about the father’s character. How did that develop?
It was hard for me. I initially made the father terrible, violent, and angry. At the Iowa Workshop, someone said he couldn’t be all bad. There must be something good in him. It’s easy for me to club people as good or bad. But that doesn’t make them interesting. There is humanity even in those people whom we think we cannot sympathize with. Once I thought about that, it helped me develop nuances in his character. What helped me was delving into his backstory as a boxer. I thought about what it means for someone to become famous because of their fists, and no one questioned them? My question regarding Samuel was-how, much of his old life is still in him? What’s that fine line between his current and past life? When I got that right, I began to work on bringing out the tenderness in him.
What was the most challenging part for you while writing your book?
Miriam’s scene with Hannah at the end was difficult as I want to be kind to my characters. I like good things to happen to them. So, the things that are harmful or hurtful are hard for me to write. From the craft perspective, it was the ending. I worked on this book for nine years and finished the first draft in 2015. I had an end where Miriam and her father would come to some sort of agreement That didn’t feel right. So, I kept figuring out what I wanted this book to say. What matters to me? I had a seminar in Iowa where people said that when you write the ending, you’ll feel it. I didn’t believe it initially. I wrote fifteen endings, and none of them felt right. When I wrote this one, I had my journal, and I was on a bus. Suddenly, I was writing vigorously and almost missed my stop. You know the feeling when you write something and tell yourself- there it is. I finished the ending in 2018 and it took me three years to revise it.
So, tell us a little more about your writing process? How do you deal with writing blocks?
I don’t do hours. I do words. I sit for about four hours, and I end up writing only a sentence. You can’t do that with words. I try and write about a thousand words a day. I have days when I can get 1000 words in an hour. It’s just flowing. There are days when it takes eight hours, and that’s excruciating. That’s my process. With regards to writing blocks, I deal with them in two ways. When I am on a computer and stuck with something hard, I always have a journal. I switch to writing by hand. That feels easier and has lower stakes than a computer. The second thing I do is to go to something I enjoy writing like a scene. I revise and work on that. I also permit myself not to write things in chronological order. That way, I ensure I get some amount of writing done.
Lastly, are there any more books in the pipeline?
After I finished writing Revival Season, I asked myself what next? And then I kept seeing another image, and that image is going to become my next book. It’s about a cult leader narrated from the perspectives of his three wives and the ways they are involved in his world. It’s about how their world works and how they love him.
Monica West is the author of Revival Season, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection, and short listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her B.A. from Duke University, her M.A. from New York University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She has received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.