The One Thing That Won’t Leave You – A Conversation with Novelist Amanda Churchill

A reclusive, cantankerous novelist, Amanda Churchill is not.

Her recent reading and conversation at the Katherine Anne Porter House felt more like a one-woman show, complete with comedic bits, heartfelt ruminations, and a charm that left the capacity crowd nodding and smiling and using phrases like “favorite reading” or “best night.”

It was that captivating of a performance. Except that it was not a performance at all.

For Churchill, the congenial, “aw shucks” (or in Churchill’s case, “aw crud”) demeanor is a personality, not a persona. And yet, it is not charisma that won Churchill’s debut novel, The Turtle House, both critical and commercial applause. (The Turtle House was described as “heartbreakingly resonant” by acclaimed author and former KAP House guest, Elizabeth Wetmore.)

It’s Churchill’s literary chops that have the Texas writing world buzzing. Her vibrant and well-drawn characters. Her impressive settings. Her masterful command of craft, and her willingness– and even desire–to revise her work until it measures up to the high standards she has for it.

Ask Churchill a question about writing, as many did after her KAP House reading, and her normally-smiling eyes narrow as she thinks about the answer. The way she speaks of making adjustments at the sentence-level might lead one to believe she’s been tasked with defusing a bomb, such is the seriousness with which she approaches her craft.

In my interview with Churchill, the first thing I needed to know was what makes a seemingly pleasant person care so deeply about literature, which its very nature often requires writers to face the unpleasantness of the world.

James Wade: What is it about literature and being a writer that compelled a– dare I say– happy person like you in the first place?

Amanda Churchill: I do hear a lot that I am entertaining– I’m funny and lighthearted (I get it from my Mama). Those are very much parts of my personality, but I think I’ve had to lean on them in times when I’ve been very sad and gone through traumatic events. Like a lot of “funny” people, I have a tendency to go to very dark places and I think this aspect of my personality keeps me from “wallerin'” in the deep too often. Writing is a way for me to work through all the things I’ve seen and felt during my life. I remember moving home from my first job after college– I had gone through a huge heartbreak (quite unceremoniously dumped) after having lost my beloved grandfather, all while transitioning to “real life” outside of college– and I remember driving through Hillsboro, pondering what the heck I was going to do next, and this thought popped into my head and it was very clear and a voice said: well, no matter what, you can always write about this, that’s the one thing that won’t leave you, you still have that. I think that’s why I do what I do. People survive this human experience in so many ways– for years I turned to more unhealthy ways of coping. Writing is the best way for me to do this thing called living.

James Wade: Writing won’t leave you, but how did you find it in the first place? Tell me a little bit about how you got started.

AC: Like many, becoming a writer– whatever that meant to me at the time– was my very first career goal and printed on an “All About Me” from first grade, Mrs. Lowry’s class. I finally completed my MA in 2009 and promptly started having children, which really slowed the writing career. However, it was something that I was not willing to totally give up and for many, many years I wrote during nap times and early in the mornings while my kids were still asleep. I read literary journals online while rocking colicky babies. I simply found scraps of time and tried to make good use of them. All of this effort eventually turned into The Turtle House. I just couldn’t see the end in sight until a writing friend pointed out that I didn’t have a collection of short stories, but a novel.

JW: From a craft standpoint, when you’re working on this project for nearly a decade, what was an element of the writing or storytelling that you didn’t really know in the beginning–how did you figure it out?

AC: Structure, structure, structure. It is what I grapple with most in my writing, and I wish I could tell you that I have figured it out. The shape of a story is so important to the telling. For the most part, the way I figure it out is through trial and error, which is the most time-intensive way! However, I also look for books that have an interesting structure and try to keep notes handy on how the writer pulls off whatever feat they’ve accomplished! I think it’s important that structure isn’t just cutesy or a gimmick, but really adds to the readers’ understanding of the text and overall enjoyment.

JW: Your novel deals with themes of home and belonging–you’ve talked before about believing everyone has the ability to find a home if they’re willing to fight for it. Can you talk about that philosophy–where it came from, how it has or hasn’t changed? What is ‘home’ to you? Did you have to fight for it?

AC: I, admittedly, have a certain amount of privilege when exploring this topic–I’m living in the hometown in which I grew up, something that doesn’t happen with regularity in this day and time. But I do feel the ideas of home and belonging are important to me because of my grandmother’s struggle to create a home within this space–this Texas–someplace that was very complicated for her. Building a life where one isn’t welcome, but doing it anyway is truly part of the American experience for many. So the question then becomes: okay, how do I make this work for myself and those people I call family? My grandmother’s answer was always love and perseverance. She believed in herself when the world didn’t, taught her kids to do the same, and fought for her place.

JW: In The Turtle House, you have created two fully-realized, incredibly well-drawn point-of-view characters. I tend to split the POV in my novels as well, and I always seem to find myself being more compelled by one character than the other. Did you have any of that? If so, what was it, and how did you get from there to this wonderfully balanced final version?

AC: Thank you for saying it was balanced, because that was a major fear of mine! Mineko was much easier for me to write, because I had such a great character study in my own grandmother. Much of the work that I did there was almost writing her backwards–looking at the way she moved her hands and brushed her hair, remembering how she would phrase one of her bitter cut-downs, imagining how she moved within her life… and then discovering the motivation there, if that makes sense. Lia was created in a more traditional manner: I had a character, she had a role to fulfill and I had to figure out how to make her real. Mineko delighted me, Lia irritated me, and so it was always a push and pull between them. I think a lot of the balance comes from having them in a scene together. Whenever they showed up in a room and started talking, something was brought out in both of them. If they didn’t have those moments to hang out, I don’t know if it would have appeared as balanced.

JW: I’ve heard a rumor that you enjoy revisions more than drafting. Why is that, and what is wrong with you?

AC: It’s true. Empty space kills me. But, if I have an idea there–some scenes, some funny dialogue, a few good moments–it’s SO much easier to see how a story will fall into place. I finished a first draft of my second novel about a year ago and some days it took me all I had to get words on the page. I would reward myself with chocolate if I got 500 words down. Some people fall in love with the[ir] first great idea–that intimidates me. That being said, once I get a good pace going, I’m much better off. And I’ll finish a not-so-great story just to be able to revise it.

JW: Your novel is in some part based on your grandmother’s story, but you had a lot of narrative and a lot of history to fill in. What was the research like? Do you give priority to the history or the fiction in historical fiction? Or how do you strike your balance?

AC: Research was all over the place and felt kinda crazy at the time, but in retrospect happened in three stages.

First, when I originally interviewed my grandmother back in 2009, she had gone through cancer treatment and was, for the first time, slowing down-.I would research what she told me during our chats throughout the week, then go back to her with what I found out. She would then tell me if I was on the right track or if she remembered things differently. This was made more difficult because my grandmother’s English was slowly crumbling in her 80s because she was taking in so much Japanese-only media, so she was searching for words in English as she spoke to me. And because I was often writing Japanese words down phonetically, then trying to find the best meaning of what she was talking about (be it a place or a concept or whatever), it was very much a linguistics puzzle.

Second, after these original interviews, I started reading a lot more about Japanese culture, specifically that of the turn of the century through the 1950s, and the effects of war. This took a long time because I really wanted to understand the bigger story of not only Japanese history, but what was happening in Asia overall. I spent a ton of money on books during this time period.

Finally, I did the specific research that was very intentional. I remember looking for information about the best department stores in Osaka during the early 1940s, looking for photos about the layout, information about where buyers sourced goods, etc. I did this to find out if certain fabrics would have been available during the war. This helped the book feel more real to me. I loved this “needle in a haystack” part of the process.

JW: And finally, we talk a lot about imposter syndrome. You’re a debut novelist. You’ve done THE thing. You got a book deal. You published a book. The book has been super well-received. What have the emotions and expectations been like? Do you feel more or less of anything than you did a few years ago?

AC: I had a lot of imposter syndrome all through the lead-up to publication. It was all the worries I had in my own head. But, once the book came out and it was real, no longer this thing that was going to happen, I felt much more comfortable. It was like worrying about if I was going to be a good mother and then doing the job of mothering. I am much better in the stage of doing than I am in the stage of pondering. As for expectations, I realized that I needed to get those figured out early in my relationship with my publisher. There was some packing away of fairy tales associated with this step. I learned quickly to be very grateful for the good things and to toss aside the things that were disappointments. And I figured out that comparison was the worst thing I could do. I truly had to focus on my own little race. All in all, I remain incredibly grateful for this opportunity and I feel very clear-eyed, yet hopeful, about my future as a writer. The very best part of it has been meeting other writers and expanding my community. That has been a true blessing.