Marcy Dermansky: On the Joy of Writing, Her Revision Process, the Importance of Praise, and Her New Novel, "Hurricane Girl"
Marcy Dermansky’s fifth novel, Hurricane Girl, follows Allison Brody who buys a beach house only to have it destroyed by a category 3 hurricane within days of moving in. Blending comedy and horror, Dermansky is a master at creating characters who are adrift, who make terrible decisions, and who we can’t help but love.
I spoke with Marcy about the joy and fun of writing, how praise is just as important as critique, if not more so, her revision process, the genre of horror, having a little fear is good for us as writers, and her fifth novel, Hurricane Girl.
Kailey Brennan DelloRusso: How did this story start for you? What was the initial spark of inspiration?
Marcy Dermansky: For me, the hardest part of novels is just starting them. I really just had this idea, like it just came into my head about what would happen if you bought a house and it just got destroyed immediately. And so it really just started from that one sentence kind of idea. Also, my sister is a photojournalist and that's one of the things she actually does. She lives in the south. She's always just taking pictures of people whose houses are ruined. And she always takes pictures of like sad people. So maybe that was part of it too. But my story is very different than anything I think she's ever actually documented.
KBD: This novel is being described as part comedy and part horror. You have always been funny in your work, which I love, but did you expect to have horror tied to your work? Was this intentional?
MD: Oh my God, it was so wild and so unintentional, which was really thrilling. When I talk to other people, a common belief is that there is so much horror going on in the world right now and that was something I was expressing. I didn’t do it on purpose.
It’s really hard for me these days, not to make characters who are writers. You’re encouraged as writers not to do it, but I still do it. But so instead of making her a novelist, I made her a screenwriter, which is very different. And then, because she was a horror writer, suddenly I put horror elements into it just because it was referring to what she was. And then it just kept on coming back. Like I love when I write to use what I have, you know? Just to somehow make it work, but I never knew that I was gonna do that. And the ending by the way was really, really surprising to me too. And I avoided that ending to tell you the truth. So I had to go back. It wasn't the first ending. It was the second.
KBD: Have you ever tried screenwriting yourself?
MD: I have tried only once. I tried to turn Bad Marie into a screenplay. I want somebody to make that into a movie. We can put that out there. But I found it so hard because so much of the way I write is either in first person or a really close third person and I like to go into characters' heads. I love just writing what they're thinking. It's just a constant stream of thoughts. I bought one of those screenplay books and I looked at the rules, it's just all dialogue. And so I was like, I dunno how to do this. I mean, there are voiceovers and there's music, but I quit really easily. Like sometimes I'm disappointed in myself, like people say to me, well, why don't you hire yourself out? So like work on the TV show or do this. And I'm like, but I can't. And I know that's like a female thing, but maybe I don't want to. Anyhow, screenwriting is quite foreign to me.
KBD: THat would be amazing if Bad Marie were made. I think it’s my favorite from you.
MD: Thank you. That is slightly a horror film too, in a different way.
KBD: Yeah, definitely. Horror is probably the genre that I avoid. Like, I don't really read it. I am such a baby. Like I can't watch horror movies.
MD: Me too. There is this beautiful young actress right now, Jenna Ortega and I just love her. But I looked at like her IMDB, like what she makes and she's just in so many horror films. She's in the new Scream and stuff like that. So I feel bad because she’s so cool but II can't watch her movies. (laughs)
KBD: I love the way you really own a sentence. They are often short but always right to the point or powerful. When revising is that something you pay particular attention to?
MD: It's definitely part of my natural style. It's what I like to do. I like to repeat things which sometimes can drive people crazy. Sometimes I like a dialogue characters will speak without contractions and I'm not sure why. I just like it that way. But now I've just been rereading the book to remember it, and even with these short sentences, I keep wanting to change like the verb, the tenses, constantly. That's the kind of thing I'll go back and forth on, but not the actual shortness of the sentences.
KBD: Yeah. I know it's probably hard to talk about your own style, but I just feel like you have such a specific one it's like, I wanna, you know, ask you about it. (laughs)
MD: I don't mind that at all. It's a great question. I guess I must like to write that way. Sometimes I think I'm really just writing to please myself. I'm like, oh wow. That's what came into my head. And it's so thrilling that there are people that really like it, or want to read the next book. It's just so gratifying to me. I don't take that for granted at all.
KBD: So with Hurricane Girl being your fifth novel has your process or routine changed over the years at all?
MD: I wanted to have changed. Like I want to be at my fifth novel to just be more confident than I am. And I am and I’m also not. I actually have the next book that I'm gonna write under contract, so I should just be like woohoo and everything's free and easy. But I mean, I started writing a new book in this in between period -before this and the next book-and I somehow didn't like what I was doing and it was becoming too personal. I love to write fiction so that I can hide in fiction. I don't wanna write a memoir, so it was just getting too close. So I stopped. I had been so proud of myself because I was starting like a year before Hurricane Girl was gonna come out and I'm like, this is perfect. It's gonna be the first time I will have ever really been writing a book when the next one comes out. But because I decided that I didn't wanna write that book anymore, I don't have anything written for the next book. And that's what I do with every novel. I wait for one to come out and then I start again. And so that's my process. And this time I was finally gonna change it and I didn’t.
KBD: (laughs) Do you outline? Can you tell us about your writing process? Your day-to-day life as a writer?
MD: I'm not a day to day writer. But when I’m in the middle of writing, I like to write daily day to day. That's the great thing about novels as opposed to short stories is you always know what you're writing. And usually when I open my file, I never just go straight ahead. I always go back a page or two to remember it and I fix them and then I move ahead and I love it. I love writing. Right now, I’m not writing and it just makes me feel kind of bad.
But I don't do outlines because I'm always surprising myself. With this book and actually with Bad Marie too, there is a time where I know something's gonna be kind of scary or hard to write and so I will just veer away from it. Yeah. So like with Bad Marie, for instance, she steals a kid and she goes to France, but in the first draft of that book, she steals the kid and she goes to Vermont. Which is so much more boring. That’s a draft that nobody's read. With Hurricane Girl, there's a point where she kind of wants to get back at a person who hurt her. ( I'm trying not to give all the spoilers of my book) But it was hard to write. It was sort of scary and hard to write and new for me. So instead I just had her like eat a lot of turkey sandwiches and do nothing and like sort of be happy. It was really boring and I deleted a hundred pages., I think that if I had outlined it, I wouldn't have deleted those pages. But once I did it, it wasn't too hard to get them gone. It was like, okay, bye. Like it wasn't tragic. So that was good, but I don't recommend that as a process. Outlining doesn't work for me, but then if you don't outline, you might end up deleting a hundred pages.
I’m actually writing a craft essay, which may or may not be published, fingers crossed that it is, but I actually tentatively titled it The Joy of Writing. People talk so much about how they hate to write and when I am writing, I just love it so much. Like it's actually fun. I don't advise people spend an hour on a paragraph, which you hear sometimes. Sometimes people will write on Twitter that they spent two hours writing and only got two paragraphs and that doesn't sound fun. You know, just write, and maybe the better sentence will come out anyway. And maybe your characters will do something nutty that you aren't expecting. If you go fast.
Then writing can be really, really enjoyable because it's only you in your head. It’s this great place to be. Right when I came out of graduate school, I found it hard to write because it wasn't just me in my head. I liked graduate school by the way but I had all the voices of writers who had been in my workshop saying, don't do that. Or that's corny. You know, all the writers in my head were like being mean to me. You really don't wanna listen to them. I mean, I know workshop is helpful, but there's always somebody in a workshop who is gonna be mean to you.
KBD: You know, it's so interesting that you say that because I feel like as a reader of your work, I can tell that you're having fun doing it. Like, especially in this one, in Hurricane Girl. It reads very quickly, but it almost feels like you wrote it in that flow, in that joy.
MD: Oh, that's nice. Actually, my editor, who didn’t want to change it, by the way, said let’s see if we can make this 40 pages longer. And it turns out that it was really easy to do that. It wasn't hard, but yeah I tried to make it a little longer.
KBD: Okay so that came in the revision process.
MD: Yeah. I have a really great agent who kind of edits my work before it gets to my editor. And then my editor was just like, this book is beautiful. I don't wanna change anything. So it was like almost by the time I submitted the book, it was ready to go, which that's not usually what happens by the way for me either. But that's what happened was this novel. I saved her note because it was so nice. I haven't framed it, but every once in a while, if I'm just feeling low, I'll just pull out that little note for my editor and it makes me feel happy.
KBD: Do you have any advice for writers? Maybe something that kept you going while writing this novel?
MD: I don't like to have a lot of readers. I have very few readers, in fact. I have one friend who's always my first reader and it doesn't make it to my agent unless my first reader likes it. But my first reader — I don't think she's lying to me — my first reader loves everything that I do. And so I just love her. She's like the best first reader ever and she always makes me feel better. She always wants more. So if I write a little bit and then I stop, I'll get an email saying I want more. That’s really helpful. And I think people should always be really careful in their readers because having negative readers or having too much, sometimes people find that it's really too much constructive criticism can be really damaging. You know what I mean? Especially if you're in your first draft or something, it's just nice to have someone say, I love this. Keep going. So I look for that. I like that. I really love praise. Like I love it so much. It's a little embarrassing.
I mean, critique is important. I also edit people's novels, that's my year round job when I'm not earning money through books. And I'm always really careful when I edit someone's novel. Like the first thing I always wanna do is just say nice stuff. Because if you critique things too much, I think you're never gonna work on it again. You might, even if they agree with everything you say, if it's just too hard, then you might just never wanna open that file. Mm. So I think kindness and praise are actually really useful.
But I’m also going to contradict that. For writers that actually wanna earn money with their writing, fear is also really, really good. It's a good part of writing because if you don't write, you're not gonna sell a book and earn any money and you're not gonna work. You're just gonna have a hard time. So I think sometimes people who are too successful in life, don't write as much because they're not afraid. Nobody wants to be afraid. It really sucks. But like for me, for instance, with my process, I had this whole cushion of a year when I could be writing and I had a contract and I didn't have to be afraid of anything and I didn't do it. So, now when this book comes out and then I sit down and I start writing my next book, I'm gonna be anxious. It's so stupid of me, but it works for me too. Like I hate my process. Then whenever I give these interviews, I'm like, why am I so honest? So there's that too.
KBD: (laughs) No, no. I love the honesty.
Marcy Dermansky is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Very Nice, The Red Car, Bad Marie, and Twins. She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Edward F. Albee Foundation. She lives with her daughter in Montclair, New Jersey.
