Robin Lefler

I’m someone who constantly thinks of all the witty things I wish I’d said two hours too late. It’s so much fun to be able to give my characters more presence of mind in the moment and get those zingy retorts in. I love, love, love some witty banter. Also, the setting and circumstances in this book really lend themselves to ridiculous situations and conversations.

What inspired the idea behind your new book Not How I Pictured It, and the choice to set the story on a deserted island?

I knew after setting my first book, Reasonable Adults, in the depths of a Muskoka winter, that I wanted to write about someplace warm. From there, it was a question of “what would be the most awkward situation to put my poor main character in?” and I couldn’t come up with much that was more terrible than being shipwrecked, marooned and forced to work together for survival with co-workers with whom she shares an angst-filled past (including her first love and an ex-best friend).

Not How I Pictured It has many fun moments and great humour. As an author, where does your humour come from?

I’m someone who constantly thinks of all the witty things I wish I’d said two hours too late. It’s so much fun to be able to give my characters more presence of mind in the moment and get those zingy retorts in. I love, love, love some witty banter. Also, the setting and circumstances in this book really lend themselves to ridiculous situations and conversations. At times when I was writing I’d think, “Is this too much? Should I inject more reality?” but then I remembered that I read to escape reality and leaned into it even further.

Interspersed throughout Not How I Pictured It are unique forms of writing and media, including blog posts, memoir excerpts, and news reports, that complement the main narrative. What was the most fun or challenging part of writing in these different styles?

It was super fun thinking about how the rest of the world experienced these people’s lives. I’ve been a consumer of celebrity gossip for years (Canadian site LaineyGossip.com has been a daily read for me since the early 2000s) and it was interesting to be on both (fictional) sides of the experience while writing this book – not just looking at all the ways we get sneak peeks into the lives of the famous, but how what we see and what is actually going on can be two very different things.

In the note at the end of the book you mention your process of how you create main characters – that they tend to show up as a name before other details materialize. What process do you take from starting with a name, to developing a multi-faceted character that will take the reader on a journey?

I wish it was something tidy and repeatable enough to be considered A Process! Often, I think of a name and then match that name to a career, which informs quite a bit about personality and, potentially, history (if, for example, that career requires extensive education, training, innate talent, etc.). Once I have that much I consider where in life my character is now, where they’d like to be, and whether what they want and what they need are the same thing (ideally they are not).

In terms of expanding the basic shape of the character into a multi-faceted character a reader can care about, most of this comes during my first draft when we (myself included) meet friends, family, love interests, and nemeses. The way the main character interacts with their world points me in new plot directions and builds the layers that make for an interesting personality. For example, I may write a one-off line about a childhood argument with a parent and suddenly I’m down a fresh path of a potentially fraught parent-child relationship. I tend to be a bit of a bare-bones outliner so there’s a lot of room for surprises along the way!

Introduce us to Ness Larkin, the lead character in Not How I Pictured It. What do you love about Ness?

Agnes “Ness” Larkin, 42, is the former star of Ocean Views, a teen drama in the vein of The O.C. or 90210. After a betrayal by someone close to her, she fled Hollywood and settled in Toronto, eventually becoming a landlord/property manager. She’s always wondered what would have happened if she’d stuck around and continued building her career, and when she gets the chance to participate in an Ocean Views reboot, she figures this is as close to a do-over as she’s going to get.

I love so many things about Ness. She acts as a very grounding presence throughout the book, which balances some of the more fantastical aspects of the story. I think my favourite, though, is that she’s in her forties and still dedicated to building the life she wants for herself. She’s not settling. She’s out there fixing broken relationships, taking on new career challenges, and generally doing the hard things because they’re the right things and she knows she’ll regret it forever if she doesn’t at least try. Admittedly, I’m biased, but I also think she’s hilarious.

Now that your second novel is coming out just in time for the summer reading season, what do you plan to work on next?

I’m working on the proposal for what will hopefully become my third novel, while also trying to talk myself out of starting a myriad of side projects because all the ideas just sound so darn fun (everything sounds fun to me for the first 10,000 words. I’m like a dog chasing squirrels until they run too far up a tree, then I go for a nap).